ached his hiding-place in safety, for the door was but fifteen
feet away.

In order to explain the events that follow, I must ask the reader to go
back to Julia, and to events that had occurred two hours before.
Hitherto she had walked to and from meeting and "singing" with
Humphreys, as a matter of courtesy. On the evening in question she had
absolutely refused to walk with him. Her mother found that threats were
as vain as coaxing. Even her threat of dying with heart-disease, then
and there, killed by her daughter's disobedience, could not move Julia,
who would not even speak with the "spider." Her mother took her into the
sitting-room alone, and talked with her.

"So this is the way you trifle with gentlemen, is it? Night before last
you engaged yourself to Mr. Humphreys, now you won't speak to him. To
think that my daughter should prove a heartless flirt!"

I am afraid that the unfilial thought came into Julia's mind that
nothing could have been more in the usual order of things than that the
daughter of a coquette should be a flirt.

"You'll kill me on the spot; you certainly will." Julia felt anxious,
for her mother showed signs of going into hysterics. But she put her
foot out and shook her head in a way that said that all her friends
might die and all the world might go to pieces before she would yield.
Mrs. Anderson had one forlorn hope. She determined to order that
forward. Leaving Julia alone, she went to her husband.

"Samuel, if you value my life go and speak to your daughter. She's got
your own stubbornness of will in her. She is just like you; she _will_
have her own way. I shall die." And Mrs. Abigail Anderson sank into a
chair with unmistakable symptoms of a hysterical attack.

I am aware that I have so far let the reader hear not one word of Samuel
Anderson's conversation. He has played a rather insignificant part in
the story. Nothing could be more _comme il faut_. Insignificance was his
characteristic. It was not so much that he was small. It is not so bad a
thing to be a little man. But to be little and insignificant also is
bad. There is only one thing worse, which is to be big and
insignificant. If one is little and insignificant, one may be
overlooked, insignificance and all. But if one is big and insignificant,
it is to be an obtrusive cipher, a great lubber, not easily kept out
of sight.

Appealed to by his wife, Samuel Anderson prepared to assert his
authority as the head of the family