but she tried not to think of it. John brought
the objectionable kids home in time for elaborate decoration "on their
backs;" but, as he watched her in the pauses of his reading aloud,
they both observed with anxiety that the black "came off a little,"
and Marjory asked him to warn her if he saw her let them go anywhere
near her face.

Two children never enjoyed a holiday more than these two enjoyed that
concert. Dyed gloves and all other sublunary trials were forgotten:
Marjory did not touch her face once; and when the happy evening was
over, the gloves were put away with a loving pat on their backs, and
John had risen ten degrees in Marjory's respect.

If those gloves had but rested on their laurels! But if people of
genius will not do that, can you expect it of dyed gloves? Few are the
authors who have not followed up a brilliant success with something
very like a failure, and Marjory's gloves seemed to catch the spirit
of the times.

Before the two weeks were up which were to restore John to
comparatively easy circumstances, and Marjory to respectability so far
as her hands went, John asked her to go with him to hear a lecture.
Just about that time he was rather wild concerning natural history,
for which, I am sorry to say, Marjory did not care a pin. She
indignantly repelled the idea of a gorilla somewhere toward the top of
her family tree, asserting that she preferred to believe that she had
descended from so mean a man as Adam, and so curious a woman as Eve,
to that: furthermore, she was indifferent upon the subject. But there
was not much she would not do to please John; so when he asked her to
go with him to hear a lecture about the gorilla, she made a face to
herself, and said certainly she would.

She consented with rather better grace from the fact that Mr.
Pradamite--such was the lecturer's euphonious name--undertook to prove
conclusively that man was _not_ descended from the gorilla; but when
the little old gentleman walked briskly upon the stage, she whispered
John that he would have been a valuable advocate of the theory held
by the other side: he wanted nothing but a little pointed felt hat,
with a feather in it, to look very much like a small edition of
the original gorilla reduced to earning his living by assisting a
hand-organist.

The lecture, to John, was delightful--so clear, so logical, went so
far back, and so deep down, and so high up. "Walked all around that
fellow I heard last week on