in
unctuous anticipation of Sarah Walker's virtue, here ensued--"Oh, what
a dear, good, sw-e-et, lovely little girl Sarah Walker is!"

There was a dead silence. It may have been fancy, but I thought that
some of the doors in the passage creaked softly as if in listening
expectation. Then the silence was broken by a sigh. Had Sarah Walker
ingloriously succumbed? Rash and impotent conclusion!

"I don't," said Sarah Walker's voice, slowly rising until it broke on
the crest of a mountainous sob, "I--don't--want--'em--to--love me.
I--don't want--'em--to say--what a--dear--good--little girl--Sarah
Walker is!" She caught her breath. "I--want--'em--to say--what a
naughty--bad--dirty--horrid--filthy--little girl Sarah Walker is--so I
do. There!"

The doors slammed all along the passages. The dreadful issue was
joined. I softly crossed the hall and looked into Sarah Walker's room.

The light from a half-opened shutter fell full upon her rebellious
little figure. She had stiffened herself in a large easy-chair into
the attitude in which she had been evidently deposited there by the
nurse whose torn-off apron she still held rigidly in one hand. Her
shapely legs stood out before her, jointless and inflexible to the
point of her tiny shoes--a POSE copied with pathetic fidelity by the
French doll at her feet. The attitude must have been dreadfully
uncomfortable, and maintained only as being replete with some vague
insults to the person who had put her down, as exhibiting a wild
indecorum of silken stocking. A mystified kitten--Sarah Walker's
inseparable--was held as rigidly under one arm with equal dumb
aggressiveness. Following the stiff line of her half-recumbent figure,
her head suddenly appeared perpendicularly erect--yet the only mobile
part of her body. A dazzling sunburst of silky hair, the color of
burnished copper, partly hid her neck and shoulders and the back of the
chair. Her eyes were a darker shade of the same color--the orbits
appearing deeper and larger from the rubbing in of habitual tears from
long wet lashes. Nothing so far seemed inconsistent with her infelix
reputation, but, strange to say, her other features were marked by
delicacy and refinement, and her mouth--that sorely exercised and
justly dreaded member--was small and pretty, albeit slightly dropped at
the corners.

The immediate effect of my intrusion was limited solely to the
nursemaid. Swooping suddenly upon Sarah Walker's too evi