ays, warm through and
through, warm to the middle of his heart, made him careless of
correctness; and so he stayed on, to be rudely jarred by and by out of
his contentment, and take with him finally into the night a renewed,
even sharpened, perception of those exasperating faults which made Mrs.
Hawthorne, as he named it, impossible.

Because they seemed to be on such solid terms of friendship after the
long evening before the fire, when they had sorrowed together and
sympathized; when he had been permitted to hold and press her hands;
when with a veritable mutual outgoing of the heart they had vied in
prophesying for each other fair and happy days, Gerald found the
boldness--and found it without much strain--the boldness to utter a
request which had burned on his lips before, but which he had repressed,
saying to himself that what Mrs. Hawthorne did was no affair of his.

"Aurora," he said--she was after this evening Mrs. Hawthorne to him only
in the hearing of others,--"Aurora, I want to ask a favor, a great
favor."

"Go ahead. I guess it's granted."

"I wish I felt sure; but I'm afraid. Say you will not take part in the
amateur variety show at _mi-careme_."

"Sakes!" cried Aurora, staring at him with round eyes. "Ask me something
easy! Ask me something else! I can't do that."

"You can. Of course you can, if you wish to. You have only to give some
excuse."

"An excuse? Not for a farm! I don't want to. I've bound myself. They
expect me as much as anything. I couldn't back out. It's so near the
time, too. Why, it's to make money for the Convalescents' Home. I'm a
big feature of the show."

"I know you are, and I have a perfect horror of what you may do. I can't
bear to think of the public sitting there gaping at you and laughing."

"The public will be composed of friends. It's all private. Give it up?
Not much! I tell you, it's nuts to me! I expect to have lots of fun.
You've never seen, Geraldino, how funny I can be. You'll see that
night."

"The voice runs that you're going to appear as a nigger mammy and sing
plantation songs."

"Oh, does it? Well, that seems innocent. What objection do you see to
that?"

"I did not call my request reasonable, dearest Aurora. I begged a
personal favor. You know the sort of nerves I have. It is like pouring
acid on them to think of you making a show of yourself."

She laughed, but would not yield; she treated his proposition like a
spoiled child's demand for the moo