sing Pesky Jane, and it's nearly twelve o'clock!"

"Never mind _them_! How came _you_ to know all the vulgar
nigger-songs?... I was going to say. It's very difficult to believe
it's quite all humbug when one hears her talk about her son and his
welfare, and his prospects and...."

"I know what she talked about. When her dear son marries, she's going
to devote herself to him and her dear daughter that will be. Wasn't
that it?"

"Yes; but then she couldn't say more than that all she had would be
theirs, and she would take her to her bosom, etcetera. Could she?"

"She'll have to pull a long way!" The vulgar child's mind has flown
straight to the Goody's outline in profile. She is quite incorrigible.
"But wasn't that what old Mr. Turveydrop said, or very nearly? Of
course, one has to consider the parties and make allowance."

"Sallykin, what a madcap you are! You don't care _what_ you say."

"We-e-ell! there's nothing in that.... But look here, mammy darling.
Did that good woman in all she said to-night--all the time she was
jawing--did she once lose sight of her meritorious attitude?"

"It may only be a _facon de parler_--a sort of habit."

"But it isn't. Jeremiah says so. We've talked it over, us two. He
says he wouldn't like his daughter--meaning me--to marry poor Prosy,
because of the Goody."

"Are you sure he meant you? Did you ask him?"

"No, because I wasn't going to twit Jeremiah with being only step.
We kept it dark who was what. But, of course, he meant me. Like a
submarine telegraph." Sally stopped a moment in gravity. Then she
said: "Mother dear!"

"What, kitten?"

"What a pity it is Jeremiah is only step! Just think how nice if
he'd been real. Now, if you'd only met twenty years sooner...."

A nettle to grasp presented itself--a bad one. Rosalind seized it
bodily. "I shouldn't have had my kitten," she said.

"I see. I should have been somebody else. But that wouldn't have
mattered to me."

"It would have--to me!" But this is the most she can do in the way
of nettle-grasping. She is glad when St. Sennan, from his tower with
the undoubted piece of Norman, begins to count twelve, and gives her
an excuse for a recall to duty. "Do think how we're keeping poor Mrs.
Lobjoit up, you unfeeling child!" is her appeal on behalf of their own
fisherman's wife. Sally is just taking note of a finale of the Ethiop
choir. "They've done Pesky Jane, and they're going away to bed," she
says. "How the black must