s
Barribel----"

"You must have left the stairway door unlocked, woman."

"For the first time in my life, ma'am, I did." The answer was an appeal
for justice if not mercy. It was an awful thing to be called "woman" by
the mistress, and to be impaled on that sharp gray gaze never sheathed
behind spectacles. Mrs. Muir was not one to quail easily, but she had
been at fault, and she realized how her small sin of omission was
leading up to consequences more momentous than anything which had
happened in this house for seventeen years. In a flash she remembered,
too, that it was just seventeen years ago this month of August since the
first wearer of the coral satin had gone forever.

"That is no excuse," said Mrs. MacDonald. "There are some things it is a
sin to forget. Locking the garret door is one, you well know why. Now
the mischief is done."

"Who'd ha' dreamed, ma'am, that Miss Barribel would ha' bin on the watch
like a cat for a mouse----"

"It's no question of dreaming, but experience. You ought to know as well
as I do that unfortunately the girl is always on the watch for anything
she ought not to see or do. It is in her blood. These many years I have
struggled to crush down inherited tendencies, and keep her on the
straight path I would have her father's daughter tread. Yet how have I
succeeded? Every day shows how little. This is only one instance among
many."

The pale cold eyes, having chilled Mrs. Muir's blood, turned to do their
work of icing Barrie into subjection; but the girl's veins ran fire. For
once, Grandma was powerless to make her feel a frozen worm.

"I wish I'd known before that my mother's things were here," she said,
in a clear, loud voice. "I'd have broken down the door to get to them.
They're mine--all mine. I will have them."

"You will not," Mrs. MacDonald answered. "Set that portrait back where
you found it with its face to the wall. Take off that immodest,
outrageous dress, and put on your own decent one. Fold up the scarlet
abomination and lay it in the trunk with the rest of the brood."

Somehow that word "brood" in connection with her lost mother's gay,
pretty garments made Barrie see her grandmother through a red haze.
"It's the things you say, not mother's lovely clothes, that are exactly
like a brood of horrid, ugly imps!" she cried. "Always you've kept
everything about her a secret from me, but you can't go on doing it now.
I've seen her beautiful picture. I know it's hers wi