"Are you safe, Nelly?" Aunt cried, rushing at me; then, with the sharpness of tense nerves, she rebuked the Judge: "Ba-ake, you hissed her!"
"Nay, my dear; in the interests of music, I frowned upon disorder." He added, with waving of his antennae eyebrows: "It was Helen's first opera."
We all laughed hysterically, and then Mrs. Van Dam and John went away.
Could—could Mr. Hynes have gone to the Opera just because he had heard that I would be there?
CHAPTER V.
A PLAGUE OF REPORTERS.
Saturday evening, Jan. 18.
Since Monday I have left the house but once. The Judge has given me a microscope so that I may study at home instead of going to Barnard; and to please him I make a pretence of cutting sections from the plants in Aunt's conservatory; but oh, it's so dull, so dull! Or would be but for my happy thoughts. It isn't interest in apical cell or primary meristem that makes me fret to return to Prof. Darmstetter!
It's all on account of reporters that I am shut up like a state secret or a crown jewel. From daylight until dark, men with pencils and notebooks, cardboard-bearing artists and people with hand cameras have watched the house; and it's so tiresome.