A Pasteboard Crown: A Story of the New York Stage

And looking into each other's eyes, they hated one another right heartily. But Dorothy, thinking only of what a pleasant surprise this finding of an old friend would be to her father, hastened to say: "Papa will remember you well, Mr. Bulkley, I'm sure!"

"Thank you!" beamed that gentleman. "And your charming mamma, how is she? Well? So glad! A very lovely woman. May I ask your present address, and your kind permission to call upon your parents—that, according to our foreign critics, is, I believe, the correct formula, since they declare that parents are governed absolutely by their children in America. Woodsedge? Broadway? Ah, yes—yes, near the new park the city is about opening—quite so! I—I shall do myself the pleasure of driving out to present my compliments to your mamma and renew my friendship with your father. Do allow me, Miss Dorrie—no trouble at all. I am on my way uptown, and I shall esteem it a pleasure to see you young ladies on to your home train."

And almost forcibly removing various packages from both girls' hands, he constituted himself their escort and guardian, feasting his eyes upon the fresh young beauty of Dorothy when the noise prevented talking. At the station he added to their parcels a couple of magazines and a box of chocolates, and, seeing them safely through the door that admitted them to their train's platform, he doffed his hat in farewell. And Dorothy gave him a rather forced smile and hasty good-by, while Sybil, with unsmiling lips, gave a short nod of her haughty young head, and William Henry Bulkley said, low: "You damned little cat," put on his hat again and went out, and, climbing into a car, added to himself: "But the other one—good Lord! When you come to talk about peaches, why——"

CHAPTER V

At the back of Woodsedge there was a place of green and fragrant mystery. In former years it had been an orchard, but unlimited sun and rain had combined, with man's neglect, to reduce it to this state of ruinous beauty. At one end the trees were so close, the boughs so intermingled, that their foliage seemed a canopy dense enough to turn aside the sharpest sun-lance, and the orchard, abutting, as it did, upon the forest growth belonging to the park, seemed but the more like a wilderness. For the girls it had many delights, the chief one being that the unscraped, uncleaned trunks, the unpruned branches, the weedy, seedy growths by the walls, all provided food in incalculable quantities for innumerable birds—long before fruit time. Your bird hates the well-cleaned, scraped-down, poison-washed, eggless, larvæless orchard of the commercially inclined farmer; but this seemed to be the general refectory for all the birds in the county. Baltimore orioles hung a nest from the tip of an elm bough directly over it. Orchard orioles, cat-birds, thrushes, and robins took apartments in it. A cuckoo and his wife dropped an inadequate and slovenly nest into an overgrown shrub, and though their slim, gray shapes were seldom seen, their "chug, chug, chug" was so often heard that Lena indignantly declared: "Dem rain crows cum make great lies in dis country. In de olt country, ven dey says 't-chug, t-chug,' ten it rain by jiminy! But here dey youst say 't-chug, t-chug' to make you worry mit de clothes dryin'," while the dainty antics of a jewel-like little redstart filled her with laughter. "I vork youst behind dat grapevine arbor, und I see him, my Miss Ladies; and he got von frau—youst so big as my tum, und so qwiet, und he make to dance und yump before her—und cock de eye at her, und he shiver out dem orange und black fedders for her to look at, und he svitch de leetle tail dis vay und dat vay, und she youst look up und say, plain, my Miss Ladies: 'Gott in himmel! Vas dere eber such a bird-mans as dis von of mine?'" And though the refectory was visited by warblers of many kinds, none of them made music sweeter than the innocent laughter of the sisters over the bird courtship Lena described.

On this particular morning the girls had gone to the tangled old orchard for secret conclave. The ground was white with spring's snowstorm of fruit blossoms, and they could feel the petals falling lightly upon their uncovered heads as they walked. Sybil pulled a monster dandelion, and, after touching the great golden disc with her lips, she drew the long stem through her dark hair, leaving the blossom blazing just above her ear.

"If this was only a rare growth," said she, "how people would rave over its beauty. Dorothy, take warning—don't be common! Always remember old gardener Jake's words to us when we were little: 'Make yerselves skeerce, young ladies, and y'ell be valley'd accordin'.' But what's the use of trying to teach wisdom to a girl who shows she's chock full of black superstitions!"

For beyond a doubt Dorothy was earnestly searching for a four-leaf clover, and presently she held out a five-leaf specimen for Sybil to look at. But she waved it away, gloomily misquoting: "That clover doth protest too much, methinks. You will do better to cling to the three-leaf, that, promising nothing, has no power to disappoint you, Dorrie!"

"Oh, but I'm looking for the four-leaf for you, Sib dear! If I find it, you will get the introduction you long for without another such disappointment as yesterday."

"Oh, don't!" cried Sybil, leaning her brow against a tree trunk; "don't talk about it!" though that was exactly what they had come out there for—to talk over the failure of Sybil's last, best, most natural seeming plan for an accidental meeting with the woman of her dreams. She was busy winking back her tears when Dorothy gave an exclamation, thrust out her hand to brush aside a big, yellow-belted, booming bumble-bee, then plucked and held up triumphantly a four-leaf clover, and, her face all flushed with heat and excitement, she cried: "See that! She's yours, dear! The Woman of Fate—she's yours! Now you see if she isn't!"

Sybil took the little emblem of good luck, and, putting her arm around her sister's waist to hug her close, she laughed: "Oh, Dorrie, for a girl who says her prayers every night and morning, you are the most superstitious little beast—what's that?"

"It's her!" answered Dorothy, in ungrammatical delight; and Sybil, catching some of her spirit, held the little emblem above her head, crying, laughingly: "Now let the poor leaf get in its fine work!"

The words were scarcely out of her lips when clear and sharp there rose the sound of metal's ringing blow against stone, followed by a quick "Ho—lá" in a woman's voice, and the instant stoppage of the regular "click-klack, click-klack" of a trotting horse.

Down under the gigantic willow—his favorite tree—had been sitting John Lawton, reading his paper, and now the girls saw him rise and hasten out to Broadway; saw him, with hat off, speaking to the fretful chestnut and his blue habited rider, who pointed backward with her crop. The watching girls, without hesitation, clambered over the low stone wall and came nearer. They made out that their father remonstrated, and the woman laughed. And then they caught from her the words: "Very kind, and in half an hour," and she was away again; but this time the "clipperty-clapperty-clip" told that she rode at a gallop. The girls fairly tore down the hill, crying "Papa—papa! what was it? Tell us about it!" But first he pointed to the disappearing pair, saying: "Look at that—that's not bad riding for a woman to do without a stirrup!"

"Without a stirrup?" questioned the girls. "Why, what do you mean, papa?"

"Just what I say. I told her it wasn't safe, but she says it's a poor horsewoman who can't ride from balance, and on she went; but she's—just wait a bit," he broke off, "I'll be back in a moment;" and he went down the road, crossed over to a large stone at the roadside, and, stooping, picked something up. Returning, the girls saw that he carried a woman's stirrup.

"That's what we heard clear up in the orchard!" said Sybil.

"Is she going to send for it?" asked Dorothy.

Sybil's very breath was suspended as she waited for the answer. How slow he was about it! At last, feeling in his pocket for a bit of twine, he replied:

"No; she's going to stop here and pick it up on her way home."

Sybil went white for an instant, then flushed red from brow to chin. Dorothy squeezed her hand sympathetically. Mr. Lawton took up the stirrup and examined the leather straps critically.

"I'm going to try to tie this thing on when she comes back. She rides all right enough for looks without it, but if that horse should shy, and I don't believe he's a bit above it, for he's as nervous as a headachy woman, she might be unseated, so I'm going——"

The girls did not wait for him to finish, but hand in hand they made a rush for the house, and flew up the outraged and groaning old stairs, to bathe their flushed faces and to brush into propriety certain flying locks of hair, and, in old-time parlance, to "prink" themselves generally for the coming interview. As they hastened down again they were disappointed to see their father standing at the gate.

"Oh!" cried Dorothy, "why did he not stay here and let her ride up to the porch for the stirrup. Then we could have appeared naturally and as a matter of course; now——"

"Now!" broke in Sybil, "as a matter of course we'll appear unnaturally, thrusting ourselves forward like ill-bred children! Oh, let's run down and bring papa back!"

And away they started, but almost immediately the "clipperty-clapperty-clip" of the approaching horse was heard, and they stopped. Dorothy, noting how swiftly the color came and went on her sister's cheek, said, piteously: "I wonder if—oh, I hope she will be nice, dear!"

"Nice?" repeated Sybil, savagely. "Why should she be nice? She is on the top wave of success—we're two little nobodies! Why nice, pray? But my pride is pushed well down in my pocket, Dorrie, and, if need be, I'll grovel for the help she alone can give me!"

She said no more, for the horse had already been pulled up, and with a laugh Miss Morrell held out her hand for the broken stirrup; but with almost incredible determination Mr. Lawton not only refused to give it up, but, leading the horse into the willow's dense shade, he produced an old awl and some twine, at sight of which the rider smilingly lifted her knee from the pommel and twisted about in the saddle, to give him a chance to find the broken strap—and the girls looked at her in amazement.

They had seen her often at the theatre—had wept themselves sick over her stage heart-break and death; but now they saw no faintest trace of that moving actress in the pleasant-faced woman before them—a fair-complexioned, wholesome-looking woman, with lots of brown hair, that had glittering threads all through and through it that were accentuated by the blackness of the velvet derby-cap she wore. Her straight nose was a little too short, her cheek-bones a little too high, her mouth a little too wide; in fact, she had escaped being a beauty so easily that one could not help feeling she had never been in danger. All of which did not prevent her from being adored by women. Presently Mr. Lawton called: "Girls, come here and help me a moment! One of you keep this horse still and the other hold Miss Morrell's habit out of the way for me."

Dorothy, forgetting her timidity, ran to the big chestnut's head, so that her sister might take the place nearest to the rider; and as Sybil held the habit's folds out of her father's way, she raised such passionately pleading dark eyes that the actress, ever sensitive to human emotions, felt her heart give a quickened throb, and said to herself: "What on earth is it this girl is demanding of me?" Then she spoke: "I beg your pardon, sir, but if these are your young daughters, will you not introduce them to me?"

And John Lawton, who had the twine between his lips and the awl just piercing the strap, jerked his head to the right, and mumbled: "M—m—my oldest daughter, Sybil," then jerked it to the left, with: "M—m—my youngest daughter, Dorothy—Miss Morrell."

And pulling off her loose riding-glove, Miss Morrell gave her hand to each of the girls with a close, warm pressure of the long, nervous fingers that was like the greeting of an old friend.

Dorothy chatted away, asking the name of the horse and making extravagant love to him. But what had happened to Sybil—the voluble, sometimes the sharp? She stood there dumb, and apparently unable to take her pleading eyes from the smiling face above her. At last the job was finished, and as Mr. Lawton placed the bronze-booted foot in the stirrup Miss Morrell's sigh of comfort and exclamation: "Ah, it does feel good to have it again, after all!" made that melancholy old gentleman laugh aloud from sheer self-satisfaction; and then, as she gathered up her reins, she gayly remarked: "Young ladies, since your father has introduced you by your first names only, perhaps you will now introduce him to me?"

And with much laughter they each took him by a hand and presented him in full name—"Mr. John W. Lawton."

Still feeling Sybil's glance, and being well used to adoring girls, Claire Morrell said, after thanking him for his kindness: "Mr. Lawton, I live just opposite, on Riverdale Avenue. If you go so far afield, will you not call upon me?" Then, touching the fading dandelion with her crop, she added: "I see you are fond of flowers. Perhaps your father will permit you and Miss Dorothy to come over some day and take a look at my posies?"

The color rushed over Sybil's face and her eyes fairly blazed in sudden joy, and the actress felt she had at least partly translated that beseeching gaze. Dorothy accepted the invitation very prettily for herself and sister, Mr. Lawton raised his hat, and as the actress wheeled her horse about her white glove fell to the ground and she rode on, leaving it there. Dorothy snatched it up and passed it to Sybil, while John Lawton looked after the rider and remarked, with emphasis: "A charming woman!"

And Dorothy answered, excitedly: "I always thought actresses had to be pretty women, though at night even this Miss Morrell looks——"

"Never mind what she looks!" interrupted her father. "She's a charming woman! You must go over some day and see her at home!" And he returned to his paper under the willow.

Dorothy went at once to her mother to give that lady a voluminous and detailed account of what had happened, and to be cross-examined at great length as to the make of the actress's habit, the quality of her horse, and the condition of her complexion, greatly doubting, as she did, Dorothy's assertion as to its naturalness. But Sybil fled upstairs and flung herself across the bed and pressed her hot cheek against the crumpled rein-rubbed glove. Her wish had been granted, and all had happened so unexpectedly. Nervous, foolish, joyful tears ran down her cheeks, and, as she recalled the comprehending blue eyes of her Woman of Fate, she knew in her heart that she had found help.

CHAPTER VI

"No doubt of it!" promptly acquiesced Sybil, while Dorothy cried: "Papa, positively you ought to take strong measures with Syb, even though she is as tall as you are—you should shake her!" And the utter absurdity of the suggestion sent them indoors in a gale of laughter that Mrs. Lawton denounced from behind the coffee urn as "absolutely heretical."

Instantly Sybil, with lance in rest, came charging at her mother: "Ho—ho! To the rescue! The English language is in danger! Mamma, had I so misused a word, you would have rapped me on the head with your thimble, à la governess Anna Smith, of evil memory."

Mrs. Lawton pushed up the quite dry bandage from her brows—that bandage was generally visible on Sunday mornings till after church bells ceased their troubling—and said: "'Pon my word, Sybil, your conduct sometimes approaches the contumacious! Dorothy, a smile may degenerate into a grin, and what amuses you is beyond my power of vision. I do know, however, that my English is unassailable."

"But," Dorothy tremulously ventured, "but, by heretical laughter, mamma, did you not mean instead that our noise was inappropriate, or——?"

"Miss!" broke in Letitia Lawton, "I meant what I said. It's Sunday, and it's heresy to laugh aloud on that day! Pass your father the cream-jug; I've lived with him in honorable wedlock for twenty years, but I can't sugar or cream his coffee right to this day."

"But, mamma," said Sybil, crunching a tiny radish, "is not heresy an unsound opinion——"

"Well, it's got to be an opinion opposed to Scripture!" and Mrs. Lawton hammered the words to the table with her knife-handle.

"Not necessarily," mildly objected John Lawton, as he pushed his cup toward the deity behind the urn. "People have committed heresy against other things than the Scriptures. You can have an unsound opinion without its being a religious one."

"There! That's just what I said!" cried Mrs. Lawton. "Immoderate laughter on Sunday is ill-bred, and is, therefore, unsound religious conduct, which is worse than unsound opinion, which you, yourself declare to be heresy. Thank you, John, you seldom back me up so readily. Why! those girls have scarcely tasted breakfast, and there they go rushing upstairs. Oh, well, the walk is rather long to St. John's, and I suppose they wish to take their time over it!" And she settled down contentedly to her own dilly-dallying meal, while Mr. Lawton, with a very red face, silently drank his second cup of coffee.

After the girls had gone churchward, and Lena was in full control of the apartment, which Mrs. Lawton always referred to till three o'clock as the breakfast-room, and afterward as the dining-room, father and mother again resorted to the porch, each occupying one of its corners. Mrs. Lawton, who prided herself upon the propriety of her attitude toward the church, sat with the prayer-book open at the lesson for the day, feeling that the bandage on her brow so fully justified her absence from the church that she was exceptionally devout in thus following the service at the correct moment, and making her responses distinctly a few times, so that she might properly impress her dangerously lax husband. Then—well, the book seemed to be a long way off—the printed words ran together, jumped apart, whirled round about, a warm haze closed softly down—she, she could not see. She slept, while over in the other corner Mr. Lawton sat by the Sunday paper that itself occupied an entire chair, and in its bulky entirety might well have required the ice-man's tongs to carry it up the hill. And in St. Johns, that church, picturesque and time-honored, that, gathering the little town about its knees, stands with it in the very centre of a hill-girdled hollow, and is in May already greenly veiled with tender ivy and young clambering rose, there sat none more devoutly attentive to the stately service than those two fair sisters from the old White house. Both were used to attracting more or less attention; therefore, when they rose for the Gospel, Sybil's "Glory be to Thee!" died away in her throat from sheer astonishment at the burning blush she saw sweeping over Dorothy's face from chin to down-bent brow. With swift, indignant eyes she searched for the cause of her sister's embarrassment, and no sooner had she found the guilty man, who stood at gaze, wrapped in what truly seemed unconscious admiration for that sweet face, than she gave a violent start of recognition; then, with sharp question in her eye, turned back to Dorothy, to find that blush even hotter, redder than it was before, and knew instinctively that she, too, had recognized the grave young man of the city car—he who had frustrated Mr. Bulkley's plan; and with a sudden swelling of the throat the conviction came to her that these two had fallen in love at sight, and in a very passion of tenderness for her sister Sybil whispered to herself, "Dorrie! little Dorrie! what are you doing, dear? He looks brave and gentle, and—and exacting, and—you dear little idiot, you are conscious of nothing but his gaze! And he, grave as he is, has quite lost track of any other presence here but Dorrie's—my little Dorrie, who is barely done with dolls!" And Sybil's dark eyes were dimmed with tears for a little time.

While they were sitting through the sermon, the dozing Letitia and John were being sorely confused and disturbed by the unexpected arrival of the oppressively opulent Mr. Bulkley. Poor Mrs. Lawton had been the last to awaken, and the glittering trap and big high-stepping sorrel with the wickedly rolling eye were coming up the unused grass-grown driveway before her eyes opened. She could not fly; she was fairly caught in bedroom slippers and bandaged head. There was but one thing to do, she decided, as John Lawton with drowsy eyes went forward to welcome his guest; she must hide her feet and play up to the bandage. In pursuance of this plan she instantly became very languid in manner and patiently enduring in expression; nor did she forget the bright bloom on her cheeks, but touching their cool surface with the back of her hand announced resignedly that she supposed her fever was coming on again.

And Mr. Bulkley frowned at the trees and talked malaria and quinine and thinning out; and finding the young ladies absent, decided to await their return. And so the evil moment came when Mr. Lawton had to confess himself unable to offer hospitality to the fretting sorrel, who was fidgeting and stamping and throwing gravel all over the place. And Mr. Bulkley had ordered his man to take the horse back the road a bit to a stable attached to a road-house they had passed and put him up there; and as Letitia heard him add, "You can also get your dinner at the house, Dolan," her heart sank like lead before a vision of her almost empty pantry.

As the returning girls stepped aside to let the horse and trap pass out they heard Mr. Bulkley's big laugh from the porch, and in an instant two frightened blue eyes were staring into two troubled dark ones, while both girls exclaimed, in absolute terror: "Dinner!"

To those who have lived in the midst of plenty all their days, this dinner question may seem very amusing or very absurd, but the genteel poor understand it well. They know the humiliation and torture the sensitive hostess feels in trying to entertain the uninvited stranger within her gates; and here was this great, flaunting, high-feeding old man! There were people to whom the girls could have frankly offered bread and butter and tea, or crackers and cheese and a cup of coffee, but not to this "big animal," as Sybil called him. Dorothy laid her hand on her sister's arm and whispered: "Let us climb through the break in the wall and go up to the orchard and signal Lena to come to us, and there arrange what we are to do."

"Good idea, that!" agreed Sybil, "for you—er—I mean, we shall never be able to escape papa's ponderous friend after we once make our appearance upon the scene." So in the orchard the sorely troubled three held secret conclave.

"Uf id vasn't Suntay!" Lena kept groaning, "or uf id vas breakfas' alretty instet of dinner, ven tings get chopped all up mit demselves so peoples don't know vat tings dey com' eat; but der dinner, Himmel! Und dat old mans, he eat—ach! I know he eat like dot great hop-up-on-to-mus at der park! Himmel!"

And Sybil threatened. "Dorrie! Dorrie! stop laughing this moment! Don't you dare grow hysterical! Lena, hold your tongue, and only answer direct questions. One chicken, you say? Only one? For five people? Dear heaven! But, Lena, has mamma her head bandaged up yet? Yes? Oh, joy! She need have no helping, then! She will be too sick, you see!"

"Nein! nein!" cried Lena, "der mistress lofes der dinner too mooch!"

"Yes, I know all that," sternly answered Sybil, "but she will restrain her appetite to-day for the reputation of her house! Dorrie, you must manage that mamma demands in her most plaintive tone some very thin toast and some tea, and she must shiver daintily at the merest suggestion of dinner. Promise her eggs for late supper, to comfort her."

Lena was for broiling their solitary chicken, but a cry of condemnation burst from Dorothy. "Broil it? Never! It must be eked out in some way. Lena, you can fry it—can't you? And make a great deal of cream sauce, and have some diamonds of toast around the edge of the dish to make it look full?"

"Ja!" nodded the willing Lena, "but dat young hens only make four goot pieces for all dat gravy sauce; und you can't be sick too, my Miss Ladies!"

"Oh!" cried Sybil. "Listen, Dorrie, listen! Lena, was there not a bit of veal left from dinner yesterday?"

"Ja!" answered Lena, "but dat goes mit de oder scraps to be chopped for der breakfas'!"

"No, no!" interrupted Sybil, "put them on the platter with the chicken; cover them well with sauce and drop a tiny morsel of parsley on each piece to mark it; and we will coach papa, Dorrie, to help us to the parsley marked portions without letting the old dear know just why, and with a little care on our part no one need guess we are not eating chicken. That will leave the whole of it for the gentlemen, and Mr. Bulkley can have the second helping he will want, for you can cook a chicken à la Maryland as well as any aunty, Lena!" Then they agreed that neither one of them would care for salad that day, but might freely indulge in coffee, though sharing very delicately in dessert. And so, patting Lena's sturdy shoulder in sign of their trust and gratitude, they picked up from the grass their shabby old prayer-books, and presently made demure appearance, coming slowly up the steep path that led to the weary, sagging, old porch.

And William Henry Bulkley, who for the last half hour had been calling himself every kind of a fool, ran his greedy old eyes over the tempting loveliness of Dorothy and changed his mind suddenly, feeling that the boredom caused by John and Letitia Lawton was not too high a price to pay for the pleasure of loitering by the side of this wonderful girl. And so he made his devoirs in most expansive fashion; cast dust in Mr. Lawton's mild blue eyes by referring, in quite a fatherly tone, to his daughters as little Dorrie and Sybbie, was deferential in the extreme to Sybil, and confessed to a distinct recollection of every horse, every equipage, of Mrs. Lawton's ownership in the past, even to one or two she had owned only in her imagination. But never, she observed, did he for one moment lose sight of Dorothy.

At last Sybil, like a pitying angel, placed herself between Mr. Bulkley and her mother's slippers, and covered that lady's retreat to her own room to arrange herself for dinner. And it was Sybil who had sternly to replace the bandage and coach the hungry and irate mother in her part of delicate sufferer, closing the scene with the words: "I know, darling, you're too proud to allow anyone to guess at the straits we are in." Then, kissing the hungry tears from her mother's eyes, she added: "Just say to yourself, now and then, 'Eggs! eggs!' and that will keep your courage up—that and the knowledge that you are the only woman alive who can wear a handkerchief about her forehead and yet look pretty."

And Letitia simpered, and sprinkled a little bay-rum on her hair to suggest headache; ate a handful of crackers to take off the sharp edge of her keen appetite, and languidly descended to the distinctly musty parlor.

Dorothy had desired to go for a few wild flowers for the table, but she had not escaped from William Henry Bulkley. In all the immaculate glory of his spring attire, as tightly trussed up as a large fowl ready for the oven, he walked at her side when the path permitted, and breathed stertorously behind her when it wouldn't. And when with a cry of joy she discovered that a twisted old hawthorn had actually hung out some garlands of snowy blossoms, he nearly had an apoplexy from his frantic efforts to obtain them for her. He loaded her with fulsome compliments, and he looked so strangely at her that the poor child hurried back to the house, vowing it was the last time she would go out with him, if he were papa's friend twenty times over; and passing him over to mamma in the parlor, she hastily arranged her handful of blossoms for the centre of the table, and captured her father and instructed him as to the serving of the chicken. As she spoke a trembling came upon his weak mouth, and his pained blue eyes looked away over her head. She put a pink-tipped forefinger on his lip and said, low: "Don't, papa, don't! It's all right, only dear, dear papa, you won't forget, will you now—for Syb and me the portions with the bits of green—you understand, papa?"

And he sighed and answered bitterly: "Yes, I understand! God knows I understand!"

At last, then, they sat at table. Sybil, holding her hatchet behind her in temporary amity, glowed and sparkled, cheerfully proclaimed her interest in the cult of delicate feeding, and boldly challenged judgment on the principal dish before them, the chicken à la Maryland, sorely frightening her family by her reckless daring. But Mr. Bulkley, with Dorothy's wistful blue eyes upon him, without hesitation gallantly declared it could not be equalled this side of Mason and Dixon's line; and, to poor Lena's sorrow, proved his sincerity by accepting a second helping, which was hard on that help-maiden, who had not even eggs to look forward to later on.

But Mrs. Lawton's shiver of repulsion at the offered soup and her faint consent to the making of a little thin toast—"oh, very, very thin"—were so cleverly done that both girls mentally promised her a hug and a kiss by and by. And William Henry Bulkley, who lived solely for physical comfort and mental excitement, and was enjoying both at that moment, beamed and sympathized and complimented and ogled, and finally left the table swept so bare of food that the very locusts of Egypt might have gained points from the completeness of his ravages. And when with grateful hearts the Lawtons saw his red face smiling "good-by" from the gorgeous trap, as it went glittering down the drive, John went directly to his beloved willow, Letitia flew to the dining-room, but Sybil, dashing her fist upon the porch railing, cried, with white lips: "Oh, what a tawdry farce life has become for us! Dorothy Lawton, I go to Miss Morrell's to-morrow! If she helps me—good! If she does not, I'll kill myself! I swear I will! Oh, mamma—Lena! Come quick! Dorrie has fainted!"

CHAPTER VII

"You mean," corrected Dorothy, "who try to help themselves. All one can do by one's own self, Syb, is just to try. But God always keeps His promises, and will surely give help if you ask for it, believing in Him. And you do believe—you do, don't you dear?"

Sybil shot a quick sidelong glance at her sister, hesitated a moment, then stopped, bent her head, and whispered, rapidly: "Lord! dear Lord! who seems always so far off, hear me, I pray! Soften this woman's heart toward me, incline her to help me, not because of any merit, but because of my great need. In your blessed Son's name I ask it. Amen!"

And then she hurried on ahead, while Dorothy, radiant with faith, scrabbled and slipped and laughed quite happily as they came out upon the wide, shady avenue, short of breath but sound of limb and skirt and shoe. As they passed the big gate and walked slowly up the driveway of The Beeches they saw a large red sunshade go bobbing around the corner of the house and halted.

"Shall we go on and ring the bell," asked Dorothy, "or shall we venture to follow her?"

"No! no!" answered Sybil. "The last refuge of the genteel beggar who comes to ask a favor is an absolute propriety of behavior—strict conformity to the demands of etiquette. To follow and join our hostess in her garden would be delightfully informal, but it would be too suggestive of familiarity. No! no! We must ring the bell and pass in a few ounces of pasteboard to the housemaid or the boy or——"

But just then there came a sound like a splash of something into water, a scream that trailed off into a gurgle of laughter, and finally clear and distinct the words: "You abominable little beast—poor angel! Hold still! You're wetting me all over, far worse than the lawn sprinkler!" And around the corner of the house came their hostess, her skirts wound well about her, while from her two outstretched hands dangled and kicked a muddy, dripping, coughing, spitting morsel of a skye-terrier. The three women gazed at one another a moment and then burst into laughter.

"If you will rest a little on the veranda—there are seats there—I will join you the moment I am divorced from this small martyr to scientific research. No levity, please, Miss Dorothy." Then suddenly lifting her voice Miss Morrell cried: "Frida! Mary! M—a—r—y! Somebody come here, please!" and swiftly resumed her reproachfully explanatory tone, saying: "This animated bit of mud is, when washed and dried, a very earnest student of biology, or, to be more exact, of zoology, since she is most deeply interested in the structure and daily habits of the fugacious frog, which, up to this time, she has considered a terrestrial beast, inhabiting shady garden beds; but now she knows him to be amphibious; has proved it, indeed, by plunging after him into the muddy depths of the lily tub, just to see for herself, you know. There's devotion to study! Oh, Frida, here you are, at last! Take Mona and put her kindly but very firmly into her tub, no soap, you know, just a thorough rinsing—and then dry her as you would be dried, that is, tenderly. Miss Dorothy, I'm afraid you are what the old comedies call 'a frivol.'" And so with light banter they entered the house.

But Miss Morrell, being an observant person, saw from the first the preoccupation of Sybil, and to her the girl's pale face, cloudy hair, insistent dark eyes, and sullen red mouth, suggested a touch of tragedy, and again she asked herself: "What does she want? What is she demanding of me?"

Dorothy, in answer to Sybil's look, was trying to find some excuse for leaving the two together, and had just expressed a desire to cross the lawn to look at a very fine hawthorn when they saw a young woman coming up the steps and heard a ring of the doorbell. Claire Morrell's eyes happened to be upon Sybil's at the moment, and the look of despair that settled whitely down upon her face made her think, with a quickening pulse, "That's just the expression of face many a woman must have seen reflected from the clear water a moment before the fatal plunge." And going swiftly forward to greet the new-comer, who was her neighbor, she decided to give Miss Lawton a chance to speak with her alone if she so desired. Therefore, directly introductions had been made, she asked Miss Helen Gray if she would not show Miss Dorothy about a bit, and, laughingly joining their hands, she shoo'd them before her, crying: "Go forth, lovers of flowers, and seek diligently for the oriole that hideth the nest in mine orchard! A prize awaits the fair, the chaste, the inexpressive she who first locates that nest!"

And as they went willingly forth Miss Morrell returned to the parlor, pushing to the door nearest the stairs, and remarked, casually: "We've got the whole floor to ourselves, now, so we may expand!"

Then, with a jerk and apropos of nothing, Sybil asked: "Miss Morrell, is it very difficult to get upon the stage?"

A flash came from the blue eyes of the actress, and her lip curled contemptuously as she answered: "Oh, no! If a woman has been party to a particularly offensive scandal, or to a shooting, or has come straight from the divorce court, then she turns quite naturally to the stage-door, which seems to open readily to her touch—such is the baneful power of notoriety. But your respectable, clean-minded girl, who wishes to enter a theatre of high standing, will find it easier to break through the wall, removing brick by brick, than to open unaided the door closed against her."

"Oh, don't!" cried Sybil, in a pained voice, "don't jest! I am in earnest! I—I—I want to go on the stage, Miss Morrell. Can you, will you, help me?"

"Certainly not!" came the swift answer. "Help to the stage a young girl who has a father and a mother and a good home? Be grateful for them, and——"

But her words were crossed by a shrill laugh and the bitter cry: "'A good home!' Dear God, hear her! 'A good home!'" And Sybil clasped her throat with both hands to choke back the strangling sobs that were following that laugh.

Claire Morrell rose, and, swiftly crossing to her guest, remarked: "You are not well." Then, quite ignoring the gasped: "Oh, yes, I am! I am well enough," she drew out the long pins securing it, lifted the heavy hat from Sybil's head, and, running her long fingers through the dark waves, said, gently: "What is it, child?"

And Sybil threw her arms about the actress's waist, crying: "May I tell you? Will you listen?" A moment's pause; then, with a swiftly clouding face, she continued: "But, what's the use, you will not understand my trouble! If death had robbed me—if a lover had deserted me—any great disaster would touch your heart! But you, who are rich, successful, secure, cannot be expected to understand the shame, the humiliation, the suffering caused by mere poverty! And yet, it is genteel poverty that is crushing out the lives of all those who are dear to me! That is my trouble, but," she let her arms drop heavily away from the waist they had clasped, "you cannot understand!"

Claire Morrell stood tall in her soft amber gown, looking down into the troubled eyes lifted to her face. A half quizzical, half tender smile was on her lips. "You must not jump so hastily to your conclusions, Miss Lawton," she said. "I am very comfortable now, it is true. I have sufficient to eat, to wear, but I have known the time when I had neither." As Sybil's eyes widened, she went on: "You think you know poverty? Well, have you ever wandered about the city streets, clinging to the fingers of a mother who staggered with weakness, while she searched for work—for shelter? Have you felt the pinch of cold, the gnawing, the actual pangs of hunger? Once Death and I were kept apart by a single slice of bread. I think you may go on, my dear, for I have matriculated, and can well understand. Thank you, dear!" For Sybil had caught the speaker's hand, and, with quick sympathy, had pressed it to her lips.

And as the actress sank down beside her, on the dark red cushions, Sybil poured forth all the story of her early luxury, her aimless education, their ever-deepening poverty, the isolation of her sister and herself, her mother's obstinate determination not to let them work, confessing even to her own dark thoughts and wicked threats, should this one hope be taken from her.

"For, you see," said she, "I can do nothing else—nothing, nothing! But I am young, I have intelligence, I have good common sense. I don't expect ever to be a crowned queen of the stage, but might not I be one of the little people that are required in so many plays? I think I might, for, oh, Miss Morrell, I do believe I could act!"

And noticing the swift play of expression on the vivid young face before her, that lady answered, quietly: "Yes, and I believe so, too."

Sybil clasped her hands, fairly gasping the words: "You will help me, then?"

"Wait? wait!" cried the other. "You are again jumping too quickly. I do not refuse entirely to consider your wishes; but, my dear girl, before I lift one finger, speak one word in your behalf, I must have the assurance that you are acting with the full approval, or at least with the consent, of your parents. No! No!" raising her hand imperatively, "don't coax, it would be useless, it would be unpardonable, dishonorable, to assist a daughter to enter a profession that her father and mother disapproved of."

Sybil leaned forward, and clutching a fold of the amber gown, asked, with dry lips: "And—and, if I win their consent? Oh, Miss Morrell, Miss Morrell, what then?" She trembled all over with excitement.

The actress, looking back to the days of her own desperate struggle, felt a great pity for this poor child, who was so eager to rush, all unarmed, into the fray—a pity and a dread. "Child," she said, earnestly, almost piteously, "promise me that in the future you will never blame me for opening the stage-door to you. No matter what happens, promise to hold me in kindly, even forgiving memory, if need be!"

And Sybil said, fervently: "I shall worship you all your life and honor and revere you my own life through, if of your mercy you make me a bread-winner!"

"Had you come to me one week ago," continued Miss Morrell, "I could have given you a small position in my company for next season, but a young widow, who has never looked upon the footlights yet, came before you, and, well, she will undertake the small parts you might have experimented with. Don't look so hopeless! When your father and mother have consented to the step we will go down to the city to do a little shopping, and we will just happen in at a certain theatre where I have often played, and I will present you to its manager, and will speak a little word for you, and perhaps he may give you the chance you long for. Child! child! Rise this moment! Kneel only to your God! Quick! Here are the others! Go over to that farthest mirror and put on your hat! Well, what luck?" as the girls came in, flushed and laughing. "What, you really found the nest?"

"Yes," said Dorothy; "but you misled us. It was not in the orchard, but hanging from the tip of an elm-bough this side the orchard wall."

"And who won the prize?" smilingly inquired Miss Morrell.

"Miss Lawton did," said Miss Gray. "My neck soon grew tired, and I gave up staring upward."

"Then behold the reward of the patient searcher and the strong of neck!" And Miss Morrell handed Dorothy a silver souvenir spoon, bearing on the bowl an etched picture of The Beeches.

"Oh, how pretty!" exclaimed the recipient. "Sybil, see! Is this not charming?" And as her sister turned to look at the bit of silver Miss Morrell was positively amazed at the brilliant beauty of the girl's face when hope-illumined! As the Lawtons withdrew, Sybil, who passed out last, looked at her Woman of Fate with luminous worshipping eyes, and whispered: "God was very good when He created you!"

CHAPTER VIII

When the girls had returned from their call on the actress they were met at the door by a wildly excited, tearfully angry Lena: "Oh, my Miss Ladies!" she cried. "Vat you tink now? Vas I a mans I could say tarn! But I'm youst a vomans, so I cry mit my eyes! Dose mens of der gas houses com und dey make mit de bill und vant money right now dis minute down. Und I say der Herr Boss he's out, und der Frau Mistress comes in der bed mit der headaches, und de Miss Ladies go visitin' mit dat big actor lady's over yonter, und dey shall put de bill on der mantel-poard unter dat clock, dot doan't go no more! Und dot smarty mans, he gif big laughs, und say, 'Oh, no! dot plan's like de clock, it doan't go!' Und he say gif him right avay quick de pay for der gas! Und I say, Did he tink I carry de gas money in my clothes? Und den dey say dey cut off dot gas—cut it short off unless dey hav' de money. Und dey shov' me avay und go down in der cellar, und for sure, my Miss Ladies, I haven't seen dem mens cut nodings at all. But after dot dey take avay demselves. I youst go to light der dark entry vay out dere, and oh! oh! der gas don't light it, it don't even make no smells, und dose men did cut off dot gas, und carry it off mit 'em! Und we ain't got only vun candles in der house! And [sobbing loudly] uf anybody in der fam'ly should be took to die, all unexpec' like, it vill be in der dark to-night—you see, now!"

Perhaps Sybil's courage might have required a little time to tighten it up to the sticking point, but this tale of Lena's was like a sharp goad pricking her forward. Throwing off her hat she said: "Lena, go make me a cup of coffee! Miss Dorothy will give you some change to buy a few candles for to-night." And as Lena trotted off to the kitchen Dorothy asked: "Shall you want me, Sybbie?" And as a shaken head was her only answer, she picked up her sister's hat and slowly turned away. At the stairs she looked back and said: "If you should want me, I'll be in our room waiting."

And the set, frowning face of Sybil softened for a moment, and she answered, gently: "Thank you, Dorrie! I know you will be wishing me success!"

And, satisfied with a kind word, Dorothy ascended to her own room, and presently heard the high shrill voice of her mother, crying out against "needless ignominy" and "degradation," caught the words "strollers, play-actors," "constables," "depths of vulgarity," "painted caricatures," and "serpent-tooth," and then suddenly the long wavering shriek and laugh of hysteria; and, knowing that Sybil needed help by that time, she softly entered the room and held her mother's beating hands, while Sybil administered soothing drops, applied a bit of plaster here and there to the self-inflicted scratches, and fastened a cologne-soaked handkerchief tightly about the doubtless aching head. But after the girls had placed her in bed she suddenly lifted her head and said, resentfully: "Miss Morrell might at least have called on me before talking things over seriously with you girls. I've been fifty times better off than she is! She may be a very great actress, but her social usages are all wrong, I can tell her that! And she can call on me, or you can keep off the stage all your life, Sybil Lawton!"

And with violently restrained laughter the girls stole out of the room, leaving their mother to enjoy a nap.

"Oh," cried Dorothy, when they had locked themselves into their own room, "was not that mamma all over? Now it is Miss Morrell who is trying to induce you to go on the stage, and mamma will not consent unless she is called upon in state by the famous suppliant! Oh, it is funny!"

But Sybil's laugh was not hearty. She was thinking of her father, whose coming she waited anxiously; and when at last they were out on the porch, alone in the sweet June dusk, she, leaning back against the railing, said, suddenly: "Dada!"

John Lawton started at the word. In an instant his memory presented him the picture of his handsome, vexed young wife as she fretted over the dark-eyed baby's persistent use of "dada" instead of papa; and his blue old eyes were very tender as they looked at the speaker expectantly.

"I went over to call upon Miss Morrell to-day."

"Did you?" he asked, in a pleased tone. "I'm sure you found her a charming companion?"

"She?" exclaimed Sybil. "She is the best, she is the kindest woman in the whole world!"

"It's a habit with you, dear, to indulge in somewhat hasty conclusions. And you are a little extravagant, too, are you not? I have heard some very pretty stories of Miss Morrell's kindness to the people about here, but 'the whole world'?"

He smiled indulgently, and was going on to complete his remark, when, noticing the tightly clasped hands, the eager manner of his daughter, he paused, and, quick as a flash, she flung herself into the story of the day. Once only he moved, once only he spoke. When first she declared her intention of going on the stage he cried "Sybil!" then clasped his hand about his lips and chin and said no other word.

She was passionately portraying their hopeless, friendless state, when he turned restlessly in his chair, and murmured: "Why doesn't Lena light the gas—the house looks so dreary?"

"Why? why?" cried Sybil. "Why, because there is no gas to light. The bill was not paid to-day! Oh! see—see, dear! Something must be done! And I'm the only one to do it, you know that!"

Faintly a groaned "Oh, God! Oh, God!" came to her ear, and she cried: "Don't misunderstand! Oh, dada, don't! There was no reproach in that! I only mean I'm so well and strong I ought to help, at least, myself!"

"It's a hard life," he whispered.

"No harder for me than for other girls," she answered.

"You might fail—you might, you know?"

"Even so," responded Sybil, "it would be more brave, more honorable to try and fail than not to try at all, but be content to cling like a parasitical growth to you and mamma, stealing from your vitality!"

He turned his pale face to her, and said: "There speaks my father, through your lips. The courage, the spirit, that passed by me reappears in you, a girl!" Again he turned away, and silence fell. She had reasoned, argued, entreated. Had it all been in vain? she asked herself. At last she faltered: "Dada, are you going to refuse your consent? Shall you forbid me?"

He turned upon her in a white passion of misery: "Refuse you? Forbid you? What right have I to forbid anything? Fathers who bring honor to the family name, who support, shelter, and protect their children, have earned the right to guide them—to forbid them for their good! But what right have I? My father gave me a fortune—I was too weak to hold it! God gave me daughters, and I am too weak to protect them!" His head fell upon his breast, he extended his trembling old hands to her, and abjectly murmured: "Pardon me, my daughter! pardon me!"

In an instant his shamed old face was resting above the high-beating young heart of his child. She smoothed back the silvery hair from his lined brow, and said, imperatively: "Dada, answer me this one question, and we will have done. Answer truly! Do you believe there is a father, great, strong, rich, influential, in this city to-night who is more truly, reverently loved than you are? Tell me!"

And the old man answered: "No! no! Though I have lost everything else in the world, my children's love remains to me. That is the one sweet drop left in the bottom of the cup! It is compensation, daughter, it is compensation!"

Sybil rested her cheek upon his head, and crooned over him as though he were a sick child, until the young summer night lifted her mighty silver shield high above the grewsome black trees, then a peevish voice from above called: "Sybil! John! What are you mooning over down there? Why on earth don't you come in out of the damp? The quinine bottle's more than half empty now! No one ever seems to consider ways and means in this house unless I do! And John, this room's full of all sorts of flopping, flying things! They've put the candle out twice, and you ought to come up here and try and chase 'em away! Besides, I—I don't want you two down there, anyway!"

John answered, obediently, "Yes, Letitia!" But Sybil laughed a short laugh, and said: "The wasp carries his sting in his tail, and the pith of mamma's remarks are generally found at their end. No, she doesn't want us two down here anyway! Papa, I knew mamma was jealous of me when I was only as high as your knee, and——"

But her father put his finger on her lip, saying: "Don't, daughter; it is not a gracious thing to speak of a mother's faults."

And Sybil said, hastily: "I beg your pardon, papa!" Then, as they rose, she put her hands on his shoulders and asked, very prettily: "Papa, will you not in so many words give me your permission to try for a position on the stage? Miss Morrell will not move an inch without it."

"She is a good woman, an honest woman!" he said. Then he put his hand under Sybil's chin and, lifting her face to the moonlight, looked steadily at her a long moment, sighed heavily, and answered: "Since you are so determined, dear, yes, you may tell Miss Morrell you are acting with my permission in seeking to enter her profession." And he put her quickly from him and went slowly into the house, stumbling up the stairs in the darkness.

And Sybil lifted her arms above her head, stretching her hands up toward the moon in a very ecstasy of joy. "Oh," she whispered, "am I to escape from this 'slough of despond'—am I to have my chance in life? Perhaps I may become successful, happy?"

And right across her smiling, upturned face a hideous creature of the night flew so low, so near, one leathery wing touched her loosened hair. She flung her hands across her face with a startled cry, then laughed a little tremulously, saying: "B-r-r-r! a bat—ugh! How I loathe them! I—I think I'll go in" and she entered the house, closing and with some difficulty locking the door in the darkness.

As she reached the top step of the stairs a door opened, and Mrs. Lawton in her undress uniform of mind as well as body, a guttering candle held high above her head, stood enframed in the doorway—Mrs. Lawton in night-dress and knitted bedroom slippers, but without her upper teeth, without her thick switch of hair, without her rosy bloom of rouge vinaigre; and without all these things it was surprising how little there seemed to be left of the every-day familiar Letitia Lawton. Looking at the small, sleek head; the pallid, sunken face; the flattened figure—Sybil thought, rather wickedly: "This is a sort of skeleton mamma. I wonder if papa would like to put her in the closet?"

But the lady was addressing her querulously: "Oh, you have decided it to be worth while to follow a mother's suggestion, and come into the house at last? In former days I could have called in a doctor for every chill in the family, even for the servants—though, to tell the truth, servants rarely have real hearty chills; indeed, I doubt their ability to contract genuine malaria. It's a mere desire to imitate their employers. But now that your poor father has lost everything—that is, everything except his good name [with a stinging look at Sybil, which, that young person understood perfectly]—I can only defend the health of my family with the quinine bottle, and I do think you and your father might have held your secret consultation inside the house. I'm sure neither Dorothy nor I would have tried to pry!"

"Oh, mamma!" indignantly exclaimed Sybil, "you know what I was asking of papa!"

"I know!" broke in Mrs. Lawton, "that you were twisting him about your little finger, as you usually do. It is not for a father to decide a girl's destiny, without even asking the mother's advice. You two have connived together, I believe, with that Morrell woman, who has not even called upon the mother she would rob! But remember this—the house that is divided against itself goes to the wall, or—er falls, or something; and how you can stand and laugh at the mother that bore you is more than I can understand! Your Grandmother Bassett never received such treatment from me—I know that! But you and your father may think everything is safely settled, and you as good as on the stage; but let me tell you I am not quite helpless in this matter. There is still one link between me and the life of ease and luxury and beauty I once knew! You seem to forget you have a god-mother—though how you can forget the only human being who has been able to give you presents for ten long years, I don't know! But you have a god-mother, and Sybil Van Camp has at least enough of her fortune left to merit our respect! Oh, you need not pout! Down you go to-morrow to Mrs. Van Camp, and if she sees no shame in spreading the name of Lawton all over New York, well and good! She was a power in her day. I nearly fainted from joy and pride when she consented to stand god-mother to you! You don't like to trouble her—very private matter? I wish it was a private matter. As for trouble, didn't she vow in church to become your surety and see that you renounced things and—ah, well, what's a god-mother for if she don't take some responsibility? Anyway, you go on to no stage without Mrs. Van Camp's consent, nor without proper social amenities being extended to your mother!

"And Sybil, I simply can't be kept standing here all night in my state of health! Of course, dear, I am interested in all your plans, but it would have been more thoughtful had you waited till morning to talk them over. But that's where you take after your poor father in a certain unpremeditated selfishness—unpremeditated, I admit, for he's a gentleman and you've had the upbringing of a lady—though you are deprived of the surroundings of one, but through no fault of yours or mine! John!"—turning sharply to peer into the darkness behind her—"what are you groaning about, I'd like to know? It's my legs and back that are bearing the fatigue of this interview. I saw you took good care to loll comfortably through your talk with Sybil. So why you should groan now, I don't know, unless you've hit your bunion on the frame of the sewing-machine again, and you generally swear a little when you do that. Sybil, I'm fairly worn out in mind as well as body, and you tore your veil the other day, didn't you? Cheap lace always goes that way. There was a time when my veils made people turn around to look at them. I had one with a border of grapes and vines, I remember; I am always an honest woman, and as the border had the effect of cutting off one's chin, I can't pretend it was becoming—but, my dear, it cost thirty dollars, as I'm a living woman! But you can wear my net veil to-morrow, and you will have to take Dorothy with you, for I shall be utterly used up and unable to chaperon you; though once they get you upon the stage, I suppose you'll go prancing about without attendance of any sort. But until that time, you will show some respect to social conventions. Good-night, Sybil! Take a quinine pill before you go to bed. You have advanced me well upon my way to the grave this day. But I can't forget you are my child, and if you should get a chill, you couldn't go down to Mrs. Van Camp, who will probably put an estoppel upon these theatre plans of yours. Yes, yes! John! I'm coming! It does seem that I might be allowed to speak a few words of advice and caution to my own daughter without interruption every moment or two!"

And profiting by the momentary diversion, Sybil flew past her mother to the room she shared with her sister. Dorothy had placed the candle high on a small bracket that held their shabby little hymnals and prayer-books, and as Sybil entered she saw directly before her the young girl on her knees at the bedside praying. The light fell upon her uplifted, happy face, making a faint aureole in the bright hair that at the back fell in a long queue. A tenderness came into Sybil's eyes, but as they fell upon the upturned soles of Dorrie's feet from beneath the night-dress, rising mischief triumphed. She looked at the pink round heels, at the whiteness of the hollows, and then the pinkness again across the balls of the little trotters; and, resisting not a moment, stooped and drawing her finger zig-zag across them both, produced a wild lash out, a startled: "Oh! ouch!—for ever and ever—Amen! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Syb!"

And before Dick could pull his head out from beneath his wing and set it in the right direction, the bed was pillowless; those useful articles serving as ammunition in the battle royal raging gloriously between the dressed and the undressed, while happily neither one guessed they were bidding farewell to childish romps in this, their last great pillow fight.

And across the hall the subdued John bowed in silence, and allowed the conquering Letitia to place her foot a little more firmly upon his neck. The light had gone out, 'tis true; yet, as the victorious one could talk on perfectly well in the dark, it was nothing short of a merciful dispensation that permitted meek and conquered John, under cover of the darkness, to sleep—sleep quietly, almost attentively, thus escaping actual madness. For as constant dropping weareth away a stone, so constant talking weareth away the listener's brain!