, with a simper between each
repetition that might have melted a heart of stone. Behind Sophy's
chair, and sticking calico-flowers into the child's tresses, stood the
senior matron of the establishment,--not a bad sort of woman,--who kept
the dresses, nursed the sick, revered Rugge, told fortunes on a pack
of cards which she always kept in her pocket, and acted occasionally
in parts where age was no drawback and ugliness desirable,--such as
a witch, or duenna, or whatever in the dialogue was poetically called
"Hag." Indeed, Hag was the name she usually took from Rugge; that which
she bore from her defunct husband was Gormerick. This lady, as she
braided the garland, was also bent on the soothing system, saying, with
great sweetness, considering that her mouth was full of pins, "Now,
deary, now, dovey, look at ooself in the glass; we could beat oo, and
pinch oo, and stick pins into oo, dovey, but we won't. Dovey will be
good, I know;" and a great patch of rouge came on the child's pale
cheeks. The clown therewith, squatting before her with his hands on his
knees, grinned lustily, and shrieked out, "My eyes, what a beauty!"

Rugge, meanwhile, one hand thrust in his bosom, contemplated the
diplomatic efforts of his ministers, and saw, by Sophy's compressed
lips and unwinking eyes, that their cajoleries were unsuccessful. He
approached and hissed into her ear, "Don't madden me! don't! you will
act, eh?"

"No," said Sophy, suddenly rising; and tearing the wreath from her hair,
she set her small foot on it with force. "No, not if you kill me!"

"Gods!" faltered Rugge. "And the sum I have paid! I am diddled! Who has
gone for Mrs. Crane?"

"Tom," said the clown.

The word was scarcely out of the clown's mouth ere Mrs. Crane herself
emerged from a side scene, and, putting off her bonnet, laid both hands
on the child's shoulders, and looked her in the face without speaking.
The child as firmly returned the gaze. Give that child a martyr's cause,
and in that frail body there would have been a martyr's soul. Arabella
Crane, not inexperienced in children, recognized a power of will
stronger than the power of brute force, in that tranquillity of eye, the
spark of calm light in its tender blue, blue, pure as the sky; light,
steadfast as the star.

"Leave her to me, all of you," said Mrs. Crane. "I will take her to
your private room, Mr. Rugge;" and she led the child away to a sort of
recess, room it could not be rightly called,