Norah, looking across at her mistress, asked, timidly, if she were quite resolved on going to Washington next week.
Mrs. Winans' soft eyes fixed themselves on the bright anthracite fire in the grate, as if an answer to the question might be evoked from its mystic hearth. Her baby seized the opportunity thus afforded to catch the nearest end of one of her floating ringlets, and dip it in the bath with mischievous fingers. She caught it from his fingers with a fitful smile, and began wringing the water from the golden tendrils, and asking absently:
"What was it you asked me, Norah?"
"I asked if you really intended visiting Washington next week," explained Norah, clearly and intelligibly. She was an educated Irishwoman, and did not affect the brogue of her countrymen.
"Yes, I certainly do so intend," decisively this time, and leaning a little forward, twisting the damp curl into a hundred glittering little spirals, she went on: "for a few days only though, as I believe I told you this morning."
"You will not take much baggage, then, I suppose?"
"No," smiling at the baby's antics in the water, and dodging the drops he mischievously splashed in her direction, "only a small trunk with necessary changes for baby and myself. I certainly shall not stay more than three days at the most."
Shall not? On the mystic page of our irrevocable destiny our resolves are sometimes translated crosswise, and will sometimes becomes will not, and shall not oft becomes shall! We, who cannot see a moment beyond the present hour, undertake in the face of God to say what we shall or shall not do in the unknown future! But poor human hearts,
"Feeble and finite, oh! what can we know!"