Sybil clasped her hands, fairly gasping the words: "You will help me, then?"
"Wait? wait!" cried the other. "You are again jumping too quickly. I do not refuse entirely to consider your wishes; but, my dear girl, before I lift one finger, speak one word in your behalf, I must have the assurance that you are acting with the full approval, or at least with the consent, of your parents. No! No!" raising her hand imperatively, "don't coax, it would be useless, it would be unpardonable, dishonorable, to assist a daughter to enter a profession that her father and mother disapproved of."
Sybil leaned forward, and clutching a fold of the amber gown, asked, with dry lips: "And—and, if I win their consent? Oh, Miss Morrell, Miss Morrell, what then?" She trembled all over with excitement.
The actress, looking back to the days of her own desperate struggle, felt a great pity for this poor child, who was so eager to rush, all unarmed, into the fray—a pity and a dread. "Child," she said, earnestly, almost piteously, "promise me that in the future you will never blame me for opening the stage-door to you. No matter what happens, promise to hold me in kindly, even forgiving memory, if need be!"
And Sybil said, fervently: "I shall worship you all your life and honor and revere you my own life through, if of your mercy you make me a bread-winner!"
"Had you come to me one week ago," continued Miss Morrell, "I could have given you a small position in my company for next season, but a young widow, who has never looked upon the footlights yet, came before you, and, well, she will undertake the small parts you might have experimented with. Don't look so hopeless! When your father and mother have consented to the step we will go down to the city to do a little shopping, and we will just happen in at a certain theatre where I have often played, and I will present you to its manager, and will speak a little word for you, and perhaps he may give you the chance you long for. Child! child! Rise this moment! Kneel only to your God! Quick! Here are the others! Go over to that farthest mirror and put on your hat! Well, what luck?" as the girls came in, flushed and laughing. "What, you really found the nest?"
"Yes," said Dorothy; "but you misled us. It was not in the orchard, but hanging from the tip of an elm-bough this side the orchard wall."
"And who won the prize?" smilingly inquired Miss Morrell.
"Miss Lawton did," said Miss Gray. "My neck soon grew tired, and I gave up staring upward."
"Then behold the reward of the patient searcher and the strong of neck!" And Miss Morrell handed Dorothy a silver souvenir spoon, bearing on the bowl an etched picture of The Beeches.