ted up. "Oh--please--please!" she cried. "Take me away--anywhere!
This is dreadful."

It was, indeed, dreadful. If I could have had my way at just that moment,
it would have gone hard with "Mrs. B." and "Allie"--and heavy-voiced Joe,
too. But I hid my feelings.

"There's nowhere else to go," said I, "except the brougham."

She sank into her chair.

A few minutes more of silence, and there was a rustling on the stairs.
She started up, trembling, looked round, as if seeking some way of escape
or some place to hide. Joe was in the doorway holding aside one of the
curtains. There entered in a beribboned and beflounced tea-gown, a pretty,
if rather ordinary, woman of forty, with a petulant baby face. She was
trying to look reserved and severe. She hardly glanced at me before
fastening sharp, suspicious eyes on Anita.

"Mrs. Ball," said I, "this is Miss Ellersly."

"Miss Ellersly!" she exclaimed, her face changing. And she advanced and
took both Anita's hands. "Mr. Ball is so stupid," she went on, with that
amusingly affected accent which is the "Sunday clothes" of speech.

"I didn't catch the name, my dear," Joe stammered.

"Be off," said I, aside, to him. "Get the nearest preacher, and hustle him
here with his tools."

I had one eye on Anita all the time, and I saw her gaze follow Joe as he
hurried out; and her expression made my heart ache. I heard him saying in
the hall, "Go in, Allie. It's O K"; heard the door slam, knew we should
soon have some sort of minister with us.

"Allie" entered the drawing-room. I had not seen her in six years. I
remembered her unpleasantly as a great, bony, florid child, unable to
stand still or to sit still, or to keep her tongue still, full of aimless
questions and giggles and silly remarks that she and her mother thought
funny. I saw her now, grown into a handsome young woman, with enough beauty
points for an honorable mention, if not for a prize--straight and strong
and rounded, with a brow and a keen look out of the eyes which it seemed
a pity should be wasted on a woman. Her mother's looks, her father's good
sense, a personality apparently got from neither, but all her own, and
unusual and interesting. No wonder the Balls felt toward her much as a pair
of barn-swallows would feel if they were to hatch out an eaglet. These
quiet, tame American parents that are always finding their suppressed
selves, the bold, fantastic, unadmitted dreams of their youth startlingly
confronting t