"I wouldn"t come," Hubert declared. "Not if Mrs. Hartle was to go down on her knees and ask me to come. So shut your mouth."
The chief event of the party for Sylvia was her meeting with Danny Lewis, who paid her a good deal of attention at supper and danced with her all the time afterward. Sylvia was grateful to him for his patience with her bad dancing at first, and she learned so quickly under his direction that when it was time to go she really danced rather well. Sylvia"s new friend saw them back to Colonial Terrace and invited himself to tea the following afternoon. Edith, who could never bear the suggestion of impoliteness, a.s.sured him that he would be most welcome, though she confided in Sylvia, as they went up to bed, that she could not feel quite sure about him. Sylvia insisted he was everything he should be, and praised his manners so highly that Edith humbly promised to believe in his perfection. Arthur went up-stairs and slammed his door without saying good night.
The next morning, a morning of east wind, Arthur attacked Sylvia on the subject of her behavior the night before.
"Look here," he opened, very grandly, "if you prefer to spend the evenings waltzing with dirty little Jews, I won"t stand it."
Sylvia regarded him disdainfully.
"Do you hear?" repeated Arthur. "I won"t stand it. It"s bad enough with that great hulking lout here, but when it comes to a greasy Jew I"ve had enough."
"So have I," Sylvia said. "You"d better go back to Hampstead."
"I"m going to-day," Arthur declared, and waited pathetically for Sylvia to protest. She was silent. Then he tried to be affectionate, and vowed he had not meant a word he said, but she brushed away his tentative caress and meek apology.
"I don"t want to talk to you any more," she said. "There are lots of things I could tell you; but you"ll always be unhappy anyway, because you"re soft and silly, so I won"t. You"ll be home for dinner," she added.
When Arthur was ready to start he looked so forlorn that Sylvia was sorry for him.
"Here, take Maria," she said, impulsively. "He"ll remind you of me."
"I don"t want anything to remind me of you," said Arthur in a hollow voice, "but I"ll take Maria."
That afternoon Danny Lewis, wearing a bright orange tie and a flashing ring, came to visit Sylvia. She had already told him a good deal about herself the night before, and when now she told him how she had dismissed Arthur he suggested that Monkley would probably find out where she was and come to take her back. Sylvia turned pale; the possibility of Arthur"s betrayal of her address had never struck her. She cried in a panic that she must leave Finsbury Park at once. Danny offered to find her a room.
"I"ve got no money. I spent all I had left on new frocks," she bewailed.
"That"s all right, kid; bring the frocks along with you. I"ve got plenty of money."
Sylvia packed in a frenzy of haste, expecting every moment to hear the bell ring and see Monkley waiting grimly outside; his cold eyes, when her imagination recalled them, made her shiver with fear. When they got down-stairs Hubert, who was in the pa.s.sage, asked where she was going, and she told him that she was going away.
"Not with that--" said Hubert, barring the way to the front door.
Danny did not hesitate; his arm shot out, and Hubert went over, bringing down the hat-stand with a crash.
"Quick, quick!" cried Sylvia, in exultation at being with some one who could act. "Edie"s gone round to the baker"s to fetch some crumpets for tea. Let"s go before she gets back."
They hurried out. The wind had fallen. Colonial Terrace looked very gray, very quiet, very long in the bitter March air. Danny Lewis with his orange tie promised a richer, warmer life beyond these ridiculous little houses that imitated one another.
CHAPTER V.
Danny Lewis took Sylvia to an eating-house in Euston Road kept by a married couple called Gonner. Here everything--the meat, the pies, the b.u.t.ter, the streaky slabs of marble, the fly-blown face of the weary clock, the sawdust sprinkled on the floor, the cane-seated chairs--combined to create an effect of greasy pallor that extended even to Mr. and Mrs. Gonner themselves, who seemed to have acquired the nature of their environment. Sylvia shrank from their whitish arms bare to the elbow and glistering with fats, and from their faces, which seemed to her like bladders of lard, especially Mrs. Gonner"s, who wore on the top of her head a k.n.o.b of dank etiolated hair. In such an atmosphere Danny Lewis with his brilliant tie and green beaver hat acquired a richness of personality that quite overpowered Sylvia"s judgment and preserved the condition of abnormal excitement set up by the rapidity and completeness with which this time she had abandoned herself to independence.
There was a brief conversation between Danny and the Gonners, after which Mr. Gonner returned to his task of cutting some very fat bacon into rashers and Mrs. Gonner held up the flap of the counter for Sylvia and Danny to pa.s.s up-stairs through the back of the shop. For one moment Sylvia hesitated when the flap dropped back into its place, for it seemed to make dangerously irrevocable her admittance to the unknown house above; Danny saw her hesitation and with a word or two of encouragement checked her impulse to go no farther. Mrs. Gonner led the way up-stairs and showed them into a bedroom prematurely darkened by coa.r.s.e lace curtains that shut out the fading daylight. Sylvia had a vague impression of too much furniture, which was confirmed when Mrs. Gonner lit a gas-jet over the mantelpiece; she looked round distastefully at the double-bed pushed against the wall, at the crimson vases painted with b.u.t.terflies, at the faded oleograph of two children on the edge of a precipice with a guardian angel behind them, whose face had at some time been eaten away by mice. There was a short silence, only broken by Mrs. Gonner"s whispering breath.
"We shall be all right here, kid, eh?" exclaimed Danny, in a tone that was at once suave and boisterous.
"What"s your room like?" Sylvia asked.
He looked at her a moment, seemed about to speak, thought better of it, and turned to Mrs. Gonner, who told Danny that he could have the front room as well if he wanted it; they moved along the pa.s.sage to inspect this room, which was much larger and better lighted than the other and was pleasantly filled with the noise of traffic. Sylvia immediately declared that she preferred to be here.
"So I"m to have the rabbit-hutch," said Danny, laughing easily. "Trust a woman to have her own way! That"s right, isn"t it, Mrs. Gonner?"
Mrs. Gonner stared at Sylvia a moment, and murmured that she had long ago forgotten what she wanted, but that, anyway, for her one thing was the same as another, which Sylvia was very ready to believe.
When Mrs. Gonner had left the room, Danny told Sylvia that he must go and get a few things together from his flat in Shaftsbury Avenue, and asked if she would wait till he came back.
"Of course I"ll wait," she told him. "Do you think I want to run away twice in one day?"
Danny still hesitated, and she wondered why he should expect her, who was so much used to being left alone, to mind waiting for him an hour or two.
"We might go to the Mo to-night," he suggested.
She looked blank.
"The Middles.e.x," he explained. "It"s a music-hall. Be a good girl while I"m out. I"ll bring you back some chocolates."
He seemed anxious to retain her with the hint of pleasures that were in his power to confer; it made Sylvia impatient that he should rely on them rather than upon her capacity for knowing her own mind.
"I may be young," she said, "but I do know what I want. I"m not like that woman down-stairs."
"And you know how to make other people want, eh?" Danny muttered. He took a step forward, and Sylvia hoped he was not going to try to kiss her--she felt disinclined at this moment for a long explanation--but he went off, whistling.
For a long time Sylvia stood by the window, looking down at the traffic and the lights coming out one by one in the windows opposite. She hoped that Danny would not end like Monkley, and she determined to be prompt in checking the first signs of his doing so. Standing here in this room, that was now dark except for the faint transitory shadows upon the walls and ceiling of lighted vehicles below, Sylvia"s thoughts went back to the time she had spent with Blanche. It seemed to her that then she had been wiser than she was now, for all the books she had read since; or was it that she was growing up and becoming an actress in scenes that formerly she had regarded with the secure aloofness of a child?
"I"m not innocent," she said to herself. "I know everything that can be known. But yet when Monkley tried to do that I was horrified. I felt sick and frightened and angry, oh, dreadfully angry! Yet when Blanche behaved as she did I did not mind at all; I used to encourage her. Oh, why am I not a boy? If I were a boy, I would show people that making love isn"t really a bit necessary. Yet sometimes I liked Arthur to make love to me. I can"t make myself out. I think I must be what people call an exceptional person. I hope Danny won"t make love to me. But I feel he will; and if he does I shall kill myself; I can"t go on living like this with everybody making love to me. I"m not like Blanche or Mabel; I don"t like it. How I used to hate Mabel! Shall I ever get like her? Oh, I wish, I wish, I wish I were a boy. I don"t believe Danny will be any better than Jimmy was. Yet he doesn"t frighten me so much. He doesn"t seem so much there as Jimmy was. But if he does make love to me, it will be more dangerous. How shall I ever escape from here? I"m sure Mrs. Gonner will never lift the flap."
Sylvia began to be obsessed by that flap, and the notion of it wrought upon her fancy to such an extent that she was impelled to go down-stairs and see if the way out was open or shut, excusing her abrupt appearance by asking for a box of matches. There were two or three people eating at the white tables, who eyed her curiously; she wondered what they would have done if she had suddenly begged their help. She was vexed with herself for giving way to her nerves like this, and she went up-stairs again with a grand resolve to be very brave. She even challenged her terrors by going into that bedroom behind and contending with its oppressiveness. So successful was she in calming her overwrought nerves that, when Danny suddenly came back and found her in his bedroom, she was no longer afraid; she looked at him there in the doorway, wearing now a large tie of pale-blue silk, as she would have looked at any brigand in an opera. When he presented her with a large box of chocolates she laughed. He wondered why; she said it was she who ought to give him chocolates, which left him blank. She tried to explain her impression of him as a brigand, and he asked her if she meant that he looked like an actor.
"Yes, that"s what I mean," she said, impatiently, though she meant nothing of the kind.
Danny seemed gratified as by a compliment and said that he was often mistaken for an actor; he supposed it was his hair.
They dined at a restaurant in Soho, where Sylvia was conscious of arousing a good deal of attention; afterward they went to the Middles.e.x music-hall, but she felt very tired, and did not enjoy it so much as she expected. Moreover, Danny irritated her by sucking his teeth with an air of importance all through the evening.
For a fortnight Danny treated Sylvia with what was almost a luxurious consideration. She was never really taken in by it, but she submitted so willingly to being spoiled that, as she told herself, she could hardly blame Danny for thinking he was fast making himself indispensable to her happiness. He was very anxious for her to lead a lazy existence, encouraged her to lie in bed the whole morning, fed her with chocolates, and tried to cultivate in her a habit of supposing that it was impossible to go anywhere without driving in a hansom; he also used to buy her brightly colored blouses and scarves, which she used to wear out of politeness, for they gave her very little pleasure. He flattered her consistently, praising her cleverness and comparing her sense of humor with that of other women always to their disadvantage. He told stories very well, particularly those against his own race; and though Sylvia was a little scornful of this truckling self-mockery, she could not help laughing at the stories. Sylvia realized by the contempt with which Danny referred to women that his victories had usually been gained very easily, and she was much on her guard. Encouraged, however, by the way in which Sylvia seemed to enjoy the superficial pleasures he provided for her, Danny soon attempted to bestow his favors as he bestowed his chocolates. Sylvia, who never feared Danny personally as she had feared Monkley, repulsed him, yet not so firmly as she would have done had not her first impression of the house still affected her imagination. Danny, who divined her malaise, but mistook it for the terror he was used to inspiring, began to play the bully. It was twilight, one of those sapphire twilights of early spring; the gas had not been lighted and the fire had died away to a glow. Sylvia had thrown off his caressing arm three times, when Danny suddenly jumped up, pulled out a clasp-knife, and, standing over Sylvia, threatened her with death if she would not immediately consent to be his. Sylvia"s heart beat a little faster at such a threat delivered with all the additional force vile language could give to it, but she saw two things quite clearly: first, that, if Danny were really to kill her, death would be far preferable to surrender; secondly, that the surest way of avoiding either would be by a.s.suming he would turn out a coward in the face of the unexpected. She rose from the arm-chair; Danny rushed to the door, flourishing his knife and forbidding her to think of escape.
"Who wants to escape?" she asked, in so cool a tone that Danny, who had naturally antic.i.p.ated a more feminine reception of his violence, failed to sustain his part by letting her see that he was puzzled. She strolled across the room to the wash-stand; then she strolled up to the brigand.
"Put that knife away," she said. "I want to tell you something, darling Danny."
In the gloom she could see that he threw a suspicious glance at her for the endearing epithet, but he put away the knife.
"What do you want to say?" he growled.
"Only this." She brought her arm swiftly round and emptied the water-bottle over him. "Though I ought to smash it on your greasy head. I read in a book once that the Jews were a subject race. You"d better light the gas."
He spluttered that he was all wet, and she turned away from him, horribly scared that in a moment his fingers would be tightening round her neck; but he had taken off his coat and was shaking it.
Sylvia poked the fire and sat down again in the arm-chair. "Listen," she began.
He came across the room in his shirt-sleeves, his tie hanging in a cascade of amber silk over his waistcoat.
"No, don"t pull down the blinds," she added. "I want to be quite sure you really have cooled down and aren"t going to play with that knife again. Listen. It"s no good your trying to make love to me. I don"t want to be made love to by anybody, least of all by you."
Danny looked more cheerful when she a.s.sured him of her indifference to other men.
"It"s no use your killing me, because you"ll only be hanged. It"s no use your stabbing me, because you"ll go to prison. If you hit me, I shall hit you back. You thought I was afraid of you. I wasn"t. I"m more afraid of a bug than I am of you. I saw a bug to-day; so I"m going to leave this house. The weather"s getting warmer. You and the bugs have come out together. Come along, Danny, dry your coat and tell me a story that will make me laugh. Tell me the story of the Jew who died of grief because he bought his wife a new hat and found his best friend had bought her one that day and he might have saved his money. Do make me laugh, Danny."
They went to the Middles.e.x music-hall that evening, and Danny did not suck his teeth once. The next morning he told Sylvia that he had been to visit a friend who wished very much to meet her, and that he proposed to introduce him that afternoon, if she agreed. He was a fellow in a good way of business, the son of a bootmaker in Drury Lane, quite a superior sort of fellow and one by whom she could not fail to be impressed; his name was Jay Cohen. The friend arrived toward four o"clock, and Danny on some excuse left him with Sylvia. He had big teeth and round, prominent eyes; his boots were very glossy and sharply pointed at the toes, with uppers of what looked like leopard-skin. Observing Sylvia"s glances directed to his boots, he asked with a smile if she admired the latest thing. She confessed they were rather too late for her taste, and Mr. Cohen excused them as a pair sent back to his father by a well-known music-hall comedian, who complained of their pinching him. Sylvia said it was lucky they only pinched him; she should not have been astonished if they had bitten him.
"You"re a Miss Smartie, aren"t you?" said Jay Cohen.
The conversation languished for a while, but presently he asked Sylvia why she was so unkind to his friend Danny.
"What do you mean, "unkind"?" she repeated. "Unkind what about?"
Mr. Cohen smiled in a deprecating way. "He"s a good boy, is Danny. Real good. He is, really. All the girls are mad about Danny. You know, smart girls, girls that get around. He"s very free, too. Money"s nothing to Danny when he"s out to spend. His father"s got a tobacconist"s shop in the Caledonian Road. A good business--a very good business. Danny told me what the turn-over was once, and I was surprised. I remember I thought what a rare good business it was. Well, Danny"s feeling a bit upset to-day, and he came round to see me early this morning. He must have been very upset, because it was very early, and he said to me that he was mad over a girl and would I speak for him? He reckoned he"d made a big mistake and he wanted to put it right, but he was afraid of being laughed at, because the young lady in question was a bit high-handed. He wants to marry you. There it is right out. He"d like to marry you at once, but he"s afraid of his father, and he thought...."
Mr. Cohen broke off suddenly in his proposal and listened: "What"s that?"
"It sounds like some one shouting down-stairs," Sylvia said. "But you often hear rows going on down there. There was a row yesterday because a woman bit on a stone in a pie and broke her tooth."
"That"s Jubie"s voice," said Mr. Cohen, blinking his eyes and running his hands nervously through his sleek hair.
"Who"s Jubie?"
Before he could explain there was a sound of impa.s.sioned footsteps on the stairs. In a moment the door was flung open, and a handsome Jewess with flashing eyes and ear-rings slammed it behind her.
"Where"s Danny?" she demanded.
"Is that you, Jubie?" said Mr. Cohen. "Danny"s gone over to see his dad. He won"t be here to-day."
"You liar, he"s here this moment. I followed him into the shop and he ran up-stairs. So you"re the kid he"s been trailing around with him," she said, eying Sylvia. "The dirty rotter!"
Sylvia resented the notion of being trailed by such a one as Danny Lewis, but, feeling undecided how to appease this tropical creature, she took the insult without reply.
"He thinks to double cross Jubie Myers! Wait till my brother Sam knows where he is."
Mr. Cohen had retired to the window and was studying the traffic of Euston Road; one of his large ears was twitching nervously toward the threats of the outraged Miss Myers, who after much breathless abuse of Sylvia at last retired to fetch her brother Sam. When she was gone, Mr. Cohen said he thought he would go too, because he did not feel inclined to meet Sam Myers, who was a pugilist with many victories to his credit at Wonderland; just as he reached the door, Danny entered and with a snarl accused him of trying to round on him.
"You know you fetched Jubie here on purpose, so as you could do me in with the kid," said Danny. "I know you, Jay Cohen."
They wrangled for some time over this, until suddenly Danny landed his friend a blow between the eyes. Sylvia, recognizing the Danny who had so neatly knocked out Hubert Organ in Colonial Terrace, became pleasantly enthusiastic on his behalf, and cried "Bravo!"
The encouragement put a fine spirit into Danny"s blows; he hammered the unfortunate Cohen round and round the room, upsetting tables and chairs and wash-stand until with a stinging blow he knocked him backward into the slop-pail, in which he sat so heavily that when he tried to rise the slop-pail stuck and gave him the appearance of a large baboon crawling with elevated rump on all-fours. Danny kicked off the slop-pail, and invited Cohen to stand up to him; but when he did get on his feet he ran to the door and reached the stairs just as Mrs. Gonner was wearily ascending to find out what was happening. He tried to stop himself by clutching the k.n.o.b of the bal.u.s.ter, which broke; the result was that he dragged Mrs. Gonner with him in a glissade which ended behind the counter. The confusion in the shop became general: Mr. Gonner cut his thumb, and the sight of the blood caused a woman who was eating a sausage to choke; another customer took advantage of the row to s.n.a.t.c.h a side of bacon and try to escape, but another customer with a finer moral sense prevented him; a dog, who was sniffing in the entrance, saw the bacon on the floor and tried to seize it, but, getting his tail trodden upon by somebody, it took fright and bit a small boy who was waiting to change a shilling into coppers. Meanwhile Sylvia, who expected every moment that Jubie and her pugilistic brother would return and increase the confusion with possibly unpleasant consequences for herself, took advantage of Danny"s being occupied in an argument with Cohen and the two Gonners to put on her hat and coat and escape from the shop. She jumped on the first omnibus and congratulated herself when she looked round and saw a policeman entering the eating-house.
Presently the conductor came up for her fare; she found she had fivepence in the world. She asked him where the omnibus went, and was told to the Cedars Hotel, West Kensington.
"Past Lillie Road?"
He nodded, and she paid away her last penny. After all, even if Monkley and her father did owe Mrs. Meares a good deal of money, Sylvia did not believe she would have her arrested. She would surely be too much interested to find that she was a girl and not a boy. Sylvia laughed when she thought of Jay Cohen in the slop-pail, for she remembered the baboon in Lillie Road, and she wondered if Clara was still there. What a lot she would have to tell Mrs. Meares, and if the baron had not left she would ask him why he had attacked her in that extraordinary way when she went to the party in Redcliffe Gardens. That was more than two years ago now. Sylvia wished she had gone to Lillie Road with Arthur Madden when she had some money and could have paid Mrs. Meares what was owing to her. Now she had not a penny in the world; she had not even any clothes. The omnibus jogged on, and Sylvia"s thoughts jogged with it.
"I wonder if I shall always have adventures," she said to herself, "but I wish I could sometimes have adventures that have nothing to do with love. It"s such a nuisance to be always running away for the same reason. It"s such a stupid reason. But it"s rather jolly to run away. It"s more fun than being like that girl in front." She contemplated a girl of about her own age, to whom an elderly woman was pointing out the St. James"s Hall with a kind of suppressed excitement, a fever of unsatisfied pleasure.
"You"ve never been to the Moore and Burgess minstrels, have you, dear?" she was saying. "We must get your father to take us some afternoon. Look at the people coming out."
The girl looked dutifully, but Sylvia thought it was more amusing to look at the people struggling to mount omnibuses already full. She wondered what that girl would have done with somebody like Danny Lewis, and she felt sorry for the prim and dutiful young creature who could never see Jay Cohen sitting in a slop-pail. Sylvia burst into a loud laugh, and a stout woman who was occupying three-quarters of her seat edged away from her a little.
"We shall be late for tea," said the elderly woman in an ecstasy of dissipation, when she saw the clock at Hyde Park Corner. "We sha"n"t be home till after six. We ought to have had tea at King"s Cross."
The elderly woman was still talking about tea when they stopped at Sloane Street, and Sylvia"s counterpart was still returning polite answers to her speculation; when they got down at South Kensington Station the last thing Sylvia heard was a suggestion that perhaps it might be possible to arrange for dinner to be a quarter of an hour earlier.
It was dark when Sylvia reached the house in Lillie Road and she hoped very much that Clara would open the door; but another servant came, and when she asked for Mrs. Meares a sudden alarm caught her that Mrs. Meares might no longer be here and that she would be left alone in the night without a penny in the world. But Mrs. Meares was in.
"Have you come about the place?" whispered the new servant. "Because if you have you"ll take my advice and have nothing to do with it."
Sylvia asked why.
"Why, it"s nothing but a common lodging-house in my opinion. The woman who keeps it--lady she calls herself--tries to kid you as they"re all paying guests. And the cats! You may like cats. I don"t. Besides I"ve been used to company where I"ve been in service, and the only company you get here is beetles. If any one goes down into the kitchen at night it"s like walking on nutsh.e.l.ls, they"re so thick."
"I haven"t come about the place," Sylvia explained. "I want to see Mrs. Meares herself."
"Oh, a friend of hers. I"m sorry, I"m shaw," said the servant, "but I haven"t said nothing but what is gospel truth, and I told her the same. You"d better come up to the droring-room--well, droring-room! You"ll have to excuse the laundry, which is all over the chairs because we had the sweep in this morning. A nice hullabaloo there was yesterday! Fire-engines and all. Mrs. Meares was very upset. She"s up in her bedroom, I expect."
The servant lit the gas in the drawing-room and, leaving Sylvia among the outspread linen, went up-stairs to fetch Mrs. Meares, who shortly afterward descended in a condition of dignified bewilderment and entered the room with one arm arched like a note of interrogation in cautious welcome.
"Miss Scarlett? The name is familiar, but--?"
Sylvia poured out her story, and at the end of it Mrs. Meares dreamily smoothed her brow.
"I don"t quite understand. Were you a girl dressed as a boy then or are you a boy dressed as a girl now?"
Sylvia explained, and while she was giving the explanation she became aware of a profound change in Mrs. Meares"s att.i.tude toward her, an alteration of standpoint much more radical than could have been caused by any resentment at the behavior of Monkley and her father. Suddenly Sylvia regarded Mrs. Meares with the eyes of Clara, or of that new servant who had whispered to her in the hall. She was no longer the bland and futile Irishwoman of regal blood; the good-natured and f.e.c.kless creature with open placket and draperies trailing in the dust of her ill-swept house; the soft-voiced, soft-hearted Hibernian with a gentle smile for man"s failings and foibles, and a tear ever welling from that moist gray eye in memory of her husband"s defection and the death of her infant son. Sylvia felt that now she was being sized up by some one who would never be indulgent again, who would exact from her the uttermost her girlhood could give, who would never forget the advantage she had gained in learning how desperate was the state of Sylvia Scarlett, and who would profit by it accordingly.
"It seems so peculiar to resort to me," Mrs. Meares was saying, "after the way your father treated me, but I"m not the woman to bear a grudge. Thank G.o.d, I can meet the blows of fortune with n.o.bility and forgive an injury with any one in the world. It"s lucky indeed that I can show my true character and offer you a.s.sistance. The servant is leaving to-morrow, and though I will not take advantage of your position to ask you to do anything in the nature of menial labor, though to be sure it"s myself knows too well the word--to put it shortly, I can offer you board and lodging in return for any little help you may give me until I will get a new servant. And it"s not easy to get servants these days. Such grand ideas have they."
Sylvia felt that she ought to accept this offer; she was dest.i.tute and she wished to avoid charity, having grasped that, though it was a great thing to make oneself indispensable, it was equally important not to put oneself under an obligation; finally it would be a satisfaction to pay back what her father owed. Not that she fancied his ghost would be disturbed by the recollection of any earthly debts; it would be purely a personal satisfaction, and she told Mrs. Meares that she was willing to help under the proposed terms.
Somewhere about nine o"clock Sylvia sat down with Mrs. Meares in the breakfast-room to supper, which was served by Amelia as if she had been unwillingly dragged into a game of cards and was showing her displeasure in the way she dealt the hand. The incandescent gas jigged up and down, and Mrs. Meares swept her plate every time she languorously flung morsels to the numerous cats, some of which they did not like and left to be trodden into the threadbare carpet by Amelia. Sylvia made inquiries about Mr. Morgan and the baron, but they had both left; the guests at present were a young actor who hoped to walk on in the new production at the St. James"s, a Nonconformist minister who had been persecuted by his congregation into resigning, and an elderly clerk threatened with locomotor ataxia, who had a theory, contrary to the advice of his doctor, that it was beneficial to walk to the city every morning. His symptoms were described with many details, but, owing to Mrs. Meares"s diving under the table to show the cats where a morsel of meat had escaped their notice, it was difficult to distinguish between the symptoms of the disease, the topography of the meat, and the names of the cats.