hioned comic operas; and a pink silk kimono embroidered with
white chrysanthemums, to top off the general effect. Needless to say,
Mrs. Parrot disapproved of the general effect, deeming it, no doubt with
some reason, a thought flamboyant for Gertrude's coolly distinguished
corner room.

But Susan, propped straight up by now against pillows, wantoned in this
finery. She would stroke the pink silk of the kimono with her thin,
sensitive fingers, sigh deeply, happily, then close her eyes.

There was nothing much wrong with her. The green-and-purple bruise on
her cheek--a somber note which would not harmonize with the frivolity of
the boudoir cap--was no longer painful. But, as Doctor Stevens put it,
"The little monkey's all in." She was tired, tired out to the last tiny
filament of her tiniest nerve....

During those first days with me she asked no awkward questions; and few
of any kind. Indeed, she rarely spoke at all, except with her
always-speaking black eyes. For the time being the restless-terrier-look
had gone from them; they were quiet and deep, and said "_Thank you_," to
Doctor Stevens, to Mrs. Parrot, to me, with a hundred modulating shades
of expression. In spite of a clear-white, finely drawn face, against
which the purple bruise stood out in shocking relief; in spite of
entirely straight but gossamery black hair; in spite of a rather short
nose and a rather wide mouth--there was a fascination about the child
which no one, not even the hostile Mrs. Parrot, wholly escaped.

"That poor, peeny little creature," admitted Mrs. Parrot, on the very
morning she left me, "has a way of looking at you--so you can't talk to
her like you'd ought to. It's somebody's duty to speak to her in a
Christian spirit. She never says her prayers. Nor mentions her father.
And don't seem to care what's happened to him, or why she's here, or
what's to come to her. And what is to come to her," demanded Mrs.
Parrot, "if she stays on in this house, without a God-fearing woman, and
one you can't fool most days? Not that I could be persuaded, having made
other arrangements. And if I may say a last word, the wild talk I've
heard here isn't what I've been used to. Nor to be approved of. No
vulgarity. None. I don't accuse. But free with matters better left to
the church; or in the dark--where they belong. All I hold is, that some
things are sacred, and some unmentionable; and conversation should take
cognizance of such!"

I had never known he