be
Jenny, sweet and handsome, with lips made for kissing and eyes that will
sparkle and shine like six o'clock of a summer morning."

Mrs. Raeburn was sitting up in bed, holding high the unconscious infant.

"And she _shall_ be happy, d'ye hear? And you sha'n't have her, so get
out, and don't wag your bonnets at my Jenny."

The three aunts looked at each other.

"I see the footprints of Satan in this room," said Miss Horner.

"Not a bit of it," contradicted her niece. "It's your own muddy feet."

Outside, a German band, seduced from hibernation by St. Luke's summer,
played the "March of the Priests" from "Athalie," leaving out the more
important notes, and soon a jaded omnibus, with the nodding bonnets of
the three Miss Horners, jogged slowly back to Clapton.

When the Miss Horners withdrew from the dingy bedroom the swish and
rustle of their occupation, Mrs. Raeburn was at first relieved,
afterwards indignant, finally anxious.

Could this strawberry-colored piece of womanhood beside her really be
liable to such a life of danger and temptation and destruction? Could
this wide-eyed stolidity ever become a spark to set men's hearts afire?
Would those soft, uncrumpling hands know some day love's fever? No, no,
her Jenny should be a home-bird--always a home-bird, and marry some nice
young chap who could afford to give her a comfortable house where she
could smile at children of her own, when the three old aunts had
moldered away like dry sticks of lavender. All that babble of flames and
hell was due to religion gone mad, to extravagant perusal of
brass-bound Bibles, to sour virginity. With some perception of human
weakness, Mrs. Raeburn began to realize that her aunts' heads were full
of heated imaginations because they had never possessed an outlet in
youth. The fierce adventures of passion had been withheld from them, and
now, in old age, they were playing with fires that should have been
extinguished long ago. Fancy living with those terrible old women at
Clapton, hearing nothing but whispers of hell-fire. All that talk of
looking after Jenny's soul was just telling the tale. There must be some
scheme behind it all. Perhaps they wanted to save money in a servant,
and thought to bring on Jenny by degrees to a condition of undignified
utility.

Mrs. Raeburn was by no means a harsh judge of human nature, but her
aunts having arrived at an unpropitious moment, she could not see their
offer from a reasonable standp