With a cry Sybil sprang to her feet, wide-eyed and palpitating with excitement, while Dorothy exclaimed, reproachfully: "Oh, papa, why did you not tell us before? Where does she live? Now don't say you don't know and so reduce us to the necessity of interviewing the policeman for ourselves!"
Mr. Lawton gently pinched his bandaged finger, to see how much it was hurt, before answering: "Miss Morrell, who is Mrs. Barton in private life, you know, lives as the crow flies exactly opposite us on Riverdale Avenue, at a place called The Beeches."
"Oh! oh!" cried Dorothy. "Let's go and tell mamma whom she has for a neighbor—she will be so interested! She used to be quite proud of living near a former residence of Miss Kemble, the English actress. Come, Sybil dear—why, are you asleep?" For her sister had been standing, staring dumbly into space. Now she leaned forward and whispered, rapidly:
"Dorrie! Dorrie! Here is the answer to your question, and here is my one chance! This woman has power to help me, and she shall use it—yes, if I have to go upon my knees to her! Her hand shall open to me the stage-door of the theatre!"
CHAPTER III
SHOPPING UNDER DIFFICULTIES
Early in their second week at Woodsedge it became evident that someone would have to go to the city to do some very necessary shopping, and a great gloom descended and enwrapped the Lawtons in consequence. The ancient legend says that the prospect of a shopping expedition ever fills the female soul with wild, unreasoning joy, which is a too general and too positive prediction. But that is the trouble with most legends, composed as they are of a little truth, much imagination, and more sweeping assertion; and I have no doubt this last irritating quality has caused the destruction of many a legend that was both beautiful and poetic. Now, fable to the contrary notwithstanding, shopping is not an unalloyed joy—always fatiguing—often a positive penance. It is sometimes a pleasure, and on rare occasions it may become an absolute delight, say, for instance, when a woman is young and pretty and has a full purse. The knowledge of her own beauty and her ability to adorn it will make the selecting, the choosing, the trying, the adapting, the decision, the retraction, the fluttering, and the hesitating—all delightful. Or when a woman who has herself passed the period of coquettish dressing shops from a full purse for those she loves, whose tastes and desires she knows perfectly, with what beaming eyes she will hover over the best, the rarest, comparing, selecting without a thought of price, only seeking beauty and quality—such shopping is unqualified pleasure.
But the gates of this shopping Paradise were closed against the Lawtons, and Sybil and Dorothy, like two made-over, rebound, cotton-backed little Peris, stood and wept as they shook vainly at the bars. Mr. Lawton had in all good faith offered to go to the city and do their errands for them, but his services had been promptly declined, though with many qualifying pats and strokes from Sybil and a violet boutonnière from Dorothy, who had remarked, as she tied it with a blade of grass: "Poor papa—he would come home with barely half the list filled."
"Worse than that," said Sybil. "Poor papa would have come home plucked bare to his innocent old breast."