into the straight and narrow road, as he
conceived it, how many times during all my childhood!

"Go to bed, I tell you!" he screamed, and half rose, brandishing his rod
of correction.

Somebody pulled at my sleeve; it was the girl. "Please come away, Mr.
Pendarves; please do come away, sir, just for a minute, and then he'll
forget it," she urged; and, with her earnest air of responsibility:
"It's so bad for him."

IV

[Illustration: "'GO TO BED, I TELL YOU,' HE SCREAMED, AND HALF ROSE"]

In the kitchen, Zaira Mary Smith was getting supper ready, as it
appeared. I followed her out passively, and sat down in a sort of maze.
It seemed incredible that, amid the shabby tragedy of this household,
there should be time or thought for the kindly business of spreading a
meal. The girl marched briskly to and fro, stooping to the oven door,
tinkling softly among her spoons and bowls, evidently taking a timid
zest in her labors. It made her seem the most sane, assured, and stable
person among us, spite of her position. I could have imagined her
singing as she went, had it not been for my presence. She was
desperately conscious of me, watching me askant with the curiously
commingled fear and trustfulness of a child. Nor, notwithstanding the
untruths or half-truths she had told me, could her connection with the
abominable rogue-fool in the next room appear other than an enormity--as
if she might be the enchanted heroine of some fairy-tale, condemned to
the service of a monster. At last, when she came and laid a board and
pan on the table beside me, and, rolling up the sleeves about her
capable, round little arms, began a severe maltreatment of a batch of
dough, I could keep silence no longer; curiosity crowded every other
feeling out of me.

"Mary Smith!" I burst out, "for God's sake, tell me all about it!"

She rested her hands on the edge of the bowl an instant. "About us?" she
said, with a quick glance at me. She gave the dough one or two
perfunctory pats and punches, biting her lips; and then suddenly, with a
rush of color, her face puckered together, she clapped her befloured
hands over it, and fell on the nearest bench in a perfect whirlwind of
sobs.

"I--I--I w-w-wanted to be respectable!" was all I could make out between
gasps--but that was staggering enough news, I thought. She wanted to be
respectable!

She went on: "I didn't come here of my own free will, Mr. Pendarves,
truly I didn't; but when we came, and I