"Do you take the reflective view?" says she.
"Do you recommend me to take the careless one?" demands he, now looking fully at her. There is a good deal of meaning in his question, but Barbara declines to recognize it. She feels she has gone far enough in that little betrayal about Doré's Gallery. She refuses to take another step; she is already, indeed, a little frightened by what she has done If Joyce should hear of it—oh——And yet how could she refrain from giving that small push to so deserving a cause?
"No, no; I recommend nothing," says she, still laughing. "Where are you staying?"
"With my cousins, the Seaton Dysarts. They had to come up to town about a tooth, or a headache, or neuralgia, or something; we shall never quite know what, as it has disappeared, whatever it is. Give me London smoke as a perfect cure for most ailments. It is astonishing what remarkable recoveries it can boast. Vera and her husband are like a couple of children. Even the pantomime isn't too much for them."
"That reminds me the children ought to be here by this time," says Mrs. Monkton, drawing out her watch. "They went to the afternoon performance. I really think," anxiously, "they are very late——"
She has hardly spoken when a sound of little running feet up the stairs outside sets her maternal fears at rest. Nearer and nearer they sound; they stop, there is a distant scuffle, the door is thrown violently open, and Tommy and Mabel literally fall into the room.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
"Then seemed to me this world far less in size, Likewise it seemed to me less wicked far; Like points in heaven I saw the stars arise, And longed for wings that I might catch a star."