f,
for young ladies to wear gents' suits on the stage."

"And of course," a gentle-eyed little girl looked up from her sewing to
remark,--"of course this club ain't formed just for makin' shirt waists.
We've got a culture-an'-refinement clause in the club constitution, so
we wouldn't want to do nothin' that wasn't real refined."

[Illustration: BURGESS GAINED AN INTEREST AND AN OCCUPATION MORE
ABSORBING THAN HE HAD FOUND FOR MANY YEARS.]

"I understand," said Burgess more at a loss than a conversation had
ever found him, "And what may I ask, is your part of the play?"

"Mamie Conners is too nervous," the lady President explained "to come
right out and act. She's 'A flourish of trumpets within an' a voice
without an' a lady of the court an' a soldier an' a choir boy at the
funeral.'"

"Ah, Miss Conners," Burgess assured this timid but versatile Hyacinth,
"that's only stage fright, all great actresses suffer from it at one
time or another."

* * * * *

During the weeks that followed, order gradually gained sway in Denmark
and Burgess gained an interest and an occupation more absorbing than he
had found for many years.

"My dear Margaret," he was wont to assure Miss Masters, when she
remonstrated with him upon his generosity, "Why shouldn't I order
supper to be sent in for them? and why shouldn't I ask them up to the
house for rehearsals? There's the big music room going to waste and
those lazy beggars of servants with nothing to do, and you saw yourself
how it brightened up poor old Aunt Priscilla. She likes it--they like
it--I like it--you ought to like it. And you certainly can't object to
my having taken them _en masse_ to see Marsden in the play. By George!
I'll drag him to theirs. We'll show him an Ophelia! that Mary Conners is
a little genius."

"She is wonderful," agreed Miss Masters. "The grace of her! The dignity!
What she herself would call the culture-an'-refinement!"

"All my discovery. That tyrant of a Rosie Rosenbaum had cast her as a
quick change, general utility woman. And in the day-time you tell me
she's a miserable little shop-girl in a Grand Street rookery!"

"That is what she used to be. But I went to the shop a day or two ago
to ask her to come up to my house to rehearse with the new Hamlet. I
watched her for a few moments before she noticed me. She was Ophelia to
the life. She conversed in blank verse. She walked about with that
little queenly air you hav