To Sybil's questioning eyes Mr. Lawton answered: "Yes, dear! That has a promising sound. What do you think, Leslie?"
"I agree with you, sir, if the woman is kindly disposed. The fact of her working in the theatre should be a distinct advantage. The question is, will she board as well as lodge her guest? For even if a restaurant were next door Sybil is far too pretty a girl to pass in and out unnoticed."
"So very like me," breathed Letitia. "It's the Bassett coloring, I think, that attracts the public eye."
"Dorothy!" exclaimed Sybil, turning from adjusting her hat before the dim old mirror, "my descendants shall rise up and call you blessed, for in the fine art of selecting a brother for your only sister you take the cake. Oh, papa! I beg your pardon! I—I meant she wins the laurel!"
"Sybil!" moaned Mrs. Lawton, distressfully, "I don't wish to rebuke you at the very moment of leave-taking, but, my very dear child, you must really check your tendency toward reckless speech. To allude to your descendants when you are not yet even engaged is not far from indelicacy; and, Dorothy, causeless laughter is rightly esteemed a proof of bad manners. Good-by, my dear; say to Mrs. Van Camp I am quite unable to go to the city in this cold weather, and must therefore ask her to act for me in the case of Mrs.—er, I don't think I quite caught the name? Eh? oh, Stivers—yes, I shall easily remember that by connecting it with a saying contradicted."
"A what, mamma?" laughed the girls.
"Stivers?" repeated Galt, meditatively, "a 'saying contradicted!' I can't find the connection. It's a mystery—impenetrable!"
"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Lawton, "it's very simple. You need just say to yourself 'not worth a stiver'—there's your saying; but she owns a house, there's your contradiction, and you have the name as quickly as possible. Yes, I shall always remember the name Stivers!"
"If," slowly put in John, "if you don't happen to forget 'the saying.'"
And good-by being said, with arms about waists the sisters held in the hall one of those secret conclaves over only heaven and themselves knew what, but without which they were never known to part for more than twenty-four hours.