ds in her earnestness,
and stepping closer to the grating. "When we came here yesterday, and
found you were not in your room, a sudden idea struck her. 'I will stay
here myself, this morning,' she said, 'and do his writing. I want to
know what sort of a story this is that is being dictated to a sister of
our House;' and so she simply turned me out and told me to go home. You
don't know how frightened I was. I was afraid that, as we dress exactly
alike, you might not at first notice that Sister Sarah was sitting at
the table, and that you might begin with an awfully affectionate speech
by Tomaso; for I knew that something of that kind was just on the point
of breaking out, and I knew too that if you did it there would be lively
times in the House of Martha, and perhaps here also. I fairly shivered
the whole morning, and my only hope was that she would begin to snap at
you as soon as you came in, and you would then know whom you had to deal
with, and that you would have to put a lot of water into your
love-making if you wanted any more help from the sisters. But if I had
known that you would not find out that she was writing for you, I should
certainly have died. I couldn't have stood it. But how in the world
could you have kept on thinking that that woman was I? She is shorter
and fatter, and not a bit like me, except in her clothes; and if you
thought I was writing for you, why did you dictate that ridiculous
stuff?"

I stood confounded. Here were answers to devise.

"Of course the dress deceived me," I said presently, "and not once did
she turn her face toward me; besides, I did not imagine for a moment
that any one but you could be sitting at that table."

"But I cannot understand why," she pursued, "if you didn't know it was
Sister Sarah, you made that sudden change in your story."

For a moment I hesitated, and then I saw I might as well speak out
honestly. When a man sees before him a pair of blue eyes like those
which were then fixed upon me, the chances are that he will speak out
honestly.

"The fact is," I said, "that I'm a little--well, sensitive; and when
you, or the person I thought was you, did not speak to me, nor look at
me, nor pay any more heed to me than if I had been a talking-machine
worked with a crank, I was somewhat provoked, and determined that if you
suddenly chose to freeze in that way I would freeze too, and that you
should have no more of that story in which you were so interested; and
s