on.

"I shall be pleased to give you a small donation, but I would rather my
name did not appear in your list. Put it down as from a friend."

"Or a Giver--a Cheerful Giver!" cried Miss Thacker, with an accent on
the adjective which brought the blood into Lilias's cheeks. The
wretched woman seemed to have fathomed her reluctance, and to be
scoffing at her beneath a pretence of approval; but surely, now that she
had got what she wanted, she would take her departure, and end this most
trying scene. She made a little movement of dismissal, whereupon Miss
Thacker glanced appealingly at the window.

"And our rother dear young friends," she was beginning, when suddenly
she put her hands up to her face and made a curious spluttering noise,
at sound of which the sisters started in dismay. She recovered herself
at once, and continued her harangue with redoubled energy; but suspicion
had been aroused, and could not easily be allayed. That laugh! It had
been so like, so extraordinarily like; and yet that hair--that
complexion--those missing teeth! It could not be! Chrissie drew nearer
and nearer, staring at the stranger with searching scrutiny, met a
direct glance of the eyes, and straightway flew upon her, wrenching off
bonnet and veil, and twitching the horn-rimmed glasses from her nose.
She squeaked and struggled, and fought the air with her woollen gloves,
but it was of no avail: there she sat, discovered and exposed, with
Nan's dark tresses streaming down behind the auburn front, Nan's
dimpling smile breaking over the whitened face.

"Such callous sardness! Dragged my hair out by the roots! Is that the
way you treat your visitors, my dear young friends?" she stuttered; but
her dear young friends had no sympathy for her woes, and crowded round
her, breathless with indignation.

"Wretched, miserable girl, so it was you all the time! What made you do
it?"

"Wanted to amuse you on a wet day, and couldn't think of anything
better. Did I do it well?"

"Abominably well! I could never have believed we should have been so
deceived. How you managed to disguise your voice I can't think, and to
make yourself look so awful. You are as white as a clown; and your
teeth, Nan! What has become of your teeth?"

"Covered them with black sticking-plaster, that's all. Not even for
your benefit, my dears, could I extract my two front molars. I smeared
my face with cold cream, and then rubbed in flour. Sticky, but
effica