there is always a
chance that it may be done, and the two girls walked up very quickly
into the High Street after this, silent, with a certain awe of
themselves and their possibilities. It might be done, now that it had
been said.

CHAPTER XV.

A DOMESTIC CRISIS.

The interest shown by the two girls in the stranger whom they had noted
with so much attention was not destined to meet with any immediate
reward. Neither he, nor "the young lady in black," whom he hurried
across the street to meet, could be heard of, or was seen for full two
days afterwards, to the great disappointment of the young Mays. Ursula,
especially, who had been entertaining vague but dazzling thoughts of a
companionship more interesting than Janey's, more novel and at the same
time more equal than that which was extended to her by the Miss
Griffiths in Grange Lane, who were so much better off and had so much
less to do than she. Ursula did not recollect the name of the fortunate
girl who was so much in the ascendant at Mr. Copperhead's ball, though
Phoebe had been introduced to her; but she did recollect her popularity
and general friendliness, and the number of partners she had, and all
those delightful signs of greatness which impress a poor little
stranger, to whom her first dance is not unmingled pleasure. She
whispered to Janey about her even in the drawing-room when all the
family were assembled.

"Do you think she will call?" said Ursula, asking counsel even of
Janey's inexperience, of which she was so contemptuous on other
occasions.

"Call! how can she, if she is a stranger?" said Janey.

"As if you knew anything about it!" Ursula retorted with great
injustice.

"If I don't know, then why do you ask me?" complained Janey with reason.
The room looked more cheerful since Ursula had come home. The fire, no
longer choked with cinders, burned clear and red. The lamp, though it
was a cheap one, and burned paraffin oil, did not smell. The old
curtains were nicely drawn, and the old covers smoothed over the chairs.
All this did not make them look less old; but it made their antiquity
natural and becoming. Johnnie, the school-boy, was learning his lessons
on the rug before the fire. Reginald sat writing, with a candle all to
himself, at a writing-table in a corner. Ursula and Janey were working
at the centre table by the light of the lamp. They had no time, you may
imagine, for fancy-work. Janey, with many contortions of her person