rb
you, but--but--oh, Miss Butterworth, pray excuse our makeshifts and our
poverty. We wished to fix up another room for you, and were ashamed to
have you see how little we had to do it with, so we were moving some
things out of our own room to-night, and----"

Here her voice broke, and she burst into an almost uncontrollable flood
of tears.

"Don't," she entreated, "don't," as, quite thoroughly ashamed, I began
to utter some excuses. "I shall be all right in a moment. I am used to
humiliations. Only"--and her whole body seemed to join in the plea, it
trembled so--"do not, I pray, speak quite so loud. My brother is more
sensitive than even Loreen and myself about these things, and if he
should hear----"

Here a suppressed oath from way down the hall assured me that he did
hear, but I gave no sign of my recognition of this fact, and Lucetta
added quickly: "He would not forgive us for our carelessness in waking
you. He is rough sometimes, but so good at heart, so good."

This, with the other small matter I have just mentioned, caused a
revulsion in my feelings. He good? I did not believe it. Yet her eyes
showed no wavering when I interrogated them with mine, and feeling that
I had perhaps been doing them all an injustice, and that what I had seen
was, as she evidently meant to intimate, due to their efforts to make a
sudden guest comfortable amid their poverty, I put the best face I could
on the matter and gave the poor, pitiful, pleading face a kiss. I was
startled to feel how cold her forehead was, and, more and more
concerned, loaded her down with such assurances of appreciation as came
to my lips, and sent her back to her own room with an injunction not to
trouble herself any more about fixing up any other room for me. "Only,"
I added, as her whole face showed relief, "we will go to the locksmith
to-morrow and get a key; and after to-night you will be kind enough to
see that I have a cup of tea brought to my room just before I retire. I
am no good without my cup of tea, my dear. What keeps other people awake
makes me sleep."

"Oh, you shall have your tea!" she cried, with an eagerness that was
almost unnatural, and then, slipping from my grasp, she uttered another
hasty apology for having roused me from my sleep and ran hastily back.

I stretched out my arm for the candle guttering in my room and held it
up to light her. She seemed to shrink at sight of its rays, and the last
vision I had of her speeding figure