,"--with a jerk of the head that set the tight
braids to bobbing.

"Oh, what did you tell her that for!" mourned Sue. "It's the way I
must go!"

"It is the truth," said Dora, solemnly, "and, oh, Miss
Susan,"--chanting--"'a lying tongue is but for a moment.'"

"I know," answered Sue, exasperated; "'a lying tongue is but for a
moment,' and 'deceitful men shall not live out half their days,' but,
Dora, this is a desperate case. So you find my mother and tell her
that--that I'm probably downstairs in the basement,--er--er--well, I
might be setting the mouse-trap." And giving Dora an encouraging push
in the direction of the hall, Sue disappeared on swift foot into the
vestibule.

CHAPTER V

Miss Mignon St. Clair was affectionately, and familiarly, known as
Tottie. About thirty, and thus well past the first freshness of youth,
she was one of that great host of women who inadvertently and
pathetically increase the look of bodily and nervous wear and tear by
the exaggerated use of cosmetics--under the comforting delusion that
these have just the opposite effect. With her applications of
liquid-white and liquid-red, Tottie invariably achieved the almost
grotesque appearance of having dressed in the dark.

In taking as it were a final stand against the passing of her girlhood,
Miss St. Clair had gone further than most. First, in very desperation,
she had colored her graying mouse-tinted hair a glowing red; and then,
as a last resort, had heroically, but with mistaken art, bobbed it.

The effect, if weird, added to the lady's striking appearance. With
glasses, and an unbelted Mother Hubbard gown made out of antiqued gold
cloth, she might have passed for a habitue of the pseudo-artistic
colony that made its headquarters not far away from her domicile. But
such was her liking for jewelry, and plenty of it, and for gowns not
loose but clinging, that, invariably equipped with an abundant supply
of toothsome gum, she looked less the blue-stocking, or the anarchistic
reformer, than what she aimed to resemble--a flaming-tressed actress
(preferably of the vampire type), a shining "star."

But such are the tricks of Fate, that Tottie, outwardly and in spirit
the true "artiste," was--as a plain matter of fact--a landlady, who
kept "roomers" at so much per week.

Her rooming-house was one of those four-story-and-basement
brownstone-front affairs with brownstone steps (and a service-entrance
under the steps) that New