“You do, father,” answered the girl. “You watch the post too much. I cannot imagine,” she continued, “why you are so fretted and so miserable, for surely we must spend very, very little indeed.”
“We spend more than we ought, Sylvia—far more. But there, dear, I am not complaining; I suppose a young girl must have dainties and fine dress.”
“Fine dress!” said Sylvia. She looked down at her shabby garment and colored painfully.
Mr. Leeson faced her with his bright and sunken dark eyes.
“Come here,” he said.
She went up to him, trembling and her head hanging.
“I saw you two days ago; it was Sunday, and you went to church. I was standing in the shrubbery. I was lost—yes, lost—in painful thoughts. Those recipes which I was about to give to the world were occupying my mind, and other things as well. You rushed by in your shabby dress; you went into the house by the back entrance. Sylvia dear, I sometimes think it would be wise to lock that door. With you and me alone in the house it might be safest to have only one mode of ingress.”
“But I always lock it when I go out,” said Sylvia; “and it saves so much time to be able to use the back entrance.”
“It is just like you, Sylvia; you argue about every thing I say. However, to proceed. You went in; I wondered at your speed. You came out again in a quarter of an hour transformed. Where did you get that dress?”
“What dress, father?”