her hand on
the back of the Shaker chair. "But it's confiscated for to-morrow night,
and I shall come for it. And, Miss Craydocke, if you _do_ manage about
the chicken,--I hate to trouble you to go downstairs, but I dare say you
want matches, or a drink of water, or something, and another time I'll
wait upon you with pleasure,--here's the door, made for the emergency,
and I on the other side of it dissolved in tears of gratitude!"

And so, for the time, Sin Saxon disappeared.

The next afternoon, Jimmy Wigley brought a big basket of raspberries to
the little piazza door. A pitcher of cream vanished from the tea-table
just before the gong was struck. Nobody supposed the cat had got it. The
people of the house understood pretty well what was going on, and who
was at the bottom of it all; but Madam Routh's party was large, and the
life of the place; they would wink hard and long before complaining at
anything that might be done in the west wing.

Sin Saxon opened her door upon Miss Craydocke when she was dressed for
the German, and about to go downstairs. "I'll trust you," she said,
"about the rocking-chair. You'll want it, perhaps, till bedtime, and
then you'll just put it in here. I shouldn't like to disturb you by
coming for it late. And please step in a minute now, won't you?"

She took her through the boudoir. There lay the "spread" upon a long
table, contrived by the contribution of one ordinary little one from
each sleeping-chamber, and covered by a pair of clean sheets, which
swept the floor along the sides. About it were ranged chairs. Two
pyramids of candles, built up ingeniously by the grouping of bedroom
tins upon hidden supports, vine-sprays and mosses serving gracefully for
concealment and decoration, stood, one on each side, half way between
the ends and centre. Cake-plates were garnished with wreathed
oak-leaves, and in the midst a great white Indian basket held the red,
piled-up berries, fresh and fragrant.

"That's the little bit of righteousness to save the city. That's paid
for," said Sin Saxon. "Jimmy Wigley's gone home with more scrip than he
ever got at once before; and if your chicken-heartedness hadn't taken
the wrong direction, Miss Craydocke, I should be perfectly at ease in my
mind."

"It's very pretty," said Miss Craydocke; "but do you think Madam Routh
would quite approve? And why couldn't you have had it openly in the
dining-room? And what do you call it a 'howl' for?" Miss Craydocke's