p
your room cleaner than he keeps it! I smelt dust on the curtains when I
was hiding from you."

Amelius thought of his dream. "Did you come out while I was asleep?" he
asked.

"Yes; I wasn't frightened of you, when you were asleep. I had a good
look at you; and I gave you a kiss." She made that confession without
the slightest sign of confusion; her calm blue eyes looked him straight
in the face. "You got restless," she went on; "and I got frightened
again. I put out the lamp. I says to myself, 'If he does scold me, I can
bear it better in the dark.'"

Amelius listened, wondering. Had he seen drowsily what he thought he
had dreamed, or was there some mysterious sympathy between Sally and
himself? The occult speculations were interrupted by Sally. "May I take
off my bonnet, and make myself tidy?" she asked. Some men might have
said No. Amelius was not one of them.

The library possessed a door of communication with the sitting-room; the
bedchamber occupied by Amelius being on the other side of the cottage.
When Sally saw Toff's reconstructed room, she stood at the door, in
speechless admiration of the vision of luxury revealed to her. From time
to time Amelius, alone in the library, heard her dabbling in her bath,
and humming the artless old English song from which she had taken her
name. Once she knocked at the closed door, and made a request through
it--"There is scent on the table; may I have some?" And once Toff
knocked at the other door, opening into the passage, and asked when
"pretty young Miss" would be ready for supper. Events went on in the
little household as if Sally had become an integral part of it already.
"What _am_ I to do?" Amelius asked himself. And Toff, entering at the
moment to lay the cloth, answered respectfully, "Hurry the young person,
sir, or the salmi will be spoilt."

She came out from her room, walking delicately on her sore feet--so
fresh and charming, that Toff, absorbed in admiration, made a mistake in
folding a napkin for the first time in his life. "Champagne, of course,
sir?" he said in confidence to Amelius. The salmi of partridge appeared;
the inspiriting wine sparkled in the glasses; Toff surpassed himself
in all the qualities which made a servant invaluable at a supper
table. Sally forgot the Home, forgot the cruel streets, and laughed and
chattered as gaily as the happiest girl living. Amelius, expanding in
the joyous atmosphere of youth and good spirits, shook off his sens