e should ever want
one like it--whoop! what would she ever do with it? No wonder she had
laughed in his face. Without laughter she would have been his tossed and
trampled victim. Laughter was her ladder; the ladder up which the circus
girl runs to sit on the elephant's shoulder.

The lock of the stateroom door whispered. Her mother was going! Now she
was gone! The daughter rose enough to look out on the gliding flood. It
was day. But, night or day, how it intensified existence, this
perpetual, tremulous passing of heaven and earth over and round and by
and beneath one! Every least incident, indoors or out, was large and
vivid, and a mere look from a window became a picture in the memory, to
hang there through life. Nay, a sound was enough, too much. The remote
peck-peck of that carpenter's hammer smote into her mind the indelible
image of the only thing he could be making at such an hour. Trying to be
deaf, she thought of Joy--timely thought! At any moment the old dear
might steal in. She dropped from her berth, and when the actual invasion
came, when Joy appeared, Ramsey was at the wash-stand, splashing like a
canary, while strewn about the cramped place lay a lot of fresh attire,
her Sunday best, brightest, longest.

"Now, you needn't say one word!" she cried.

The old woman bridled to say many, but before she could speak there was
a fervent challenge to answer:

"Do you realize all I've got to attend to to-day?"

The nurse's mouth opened but another question was shot into it: "Has
anybody told about the _Quakeress_?"

There was a limit to forbearance. "Now, Miss Ramsey Hayle, ef dey is
tell it, aw ef dey hain't--to yo' ma--dat's all right an' beseemly. But
fo' you, dat ain't no fitt'n' story fo' you to heah!"

Ramsey stared from her towel with lips apart. "Why, you--I'm going to
hear it!--all!--this day!--or, anyhow, this trip!--from--from--" She
fell upon the nurse's shoulder, convulsed.

"F'om who' is you gwine hear it? Stop, missie, stawp! Dat's madness, dat
laughteh. De Bible say' so! F'm who'--? Lawd! yo' head's a-wett'n' my
breas'-han'kercheh!"

Ramsey drew up, her eyes dancing, but went into a new transport as she
replied: "From the baby elephant!"

"No, you don't, Miss Ramsey Hayle! No, you don't! An' besides, befo' you
heah de story o' de _Quak'ess_ you want to heah de story o' Phyllis."

XVI

PHYLLIS

From earliest childhood the Hugh whom it gave Ramsey such rapture to
nickname had