"Anything with fire-water for me," she hiccoughed. Then clutching hold of him, she sunk her voice to a whisper—"I left this sphere for drinking a quart of gillyflower scent!"
Julie began to weep softly—"Oh, Aunt Jane, if you were only here! Our Aunt Jane was different from these people," she wailed to herself, half apologetically.
She was fond of studying the picture in the other room and could have traced it from memory. Raising her eyes, she gave a prolonged shriek. The fish-fag and some of the Makemies were dragging her beloved Jane over Lady Lyron's court steps, out of the powdering closet.
The room was becoming uproarious. Doors were opening and shutting again, letting in the moaning of the bells. The culmination of the buffoonery was approaching.
"Good, Jane," sobbed Miss Julie.
"Good, Jane," echoed the chorus of the spectres.
Reluctant, and feigning a great stress of emotion, the poor lady was pushed into the illuminated space below the hundred-taper drop. She looked like some pretty long-vaulted effigy. In her hands she still carried the spray of milk-weed.
The noise lessened for a moment. Jane gazed reproachfully at her niece, Julie, as if the indiscreet wish were the cause of her present misery, and said, in a pensive voice, "I did not want to come to-night."
"I always knew you were a modest woman," said Jonathan, recovering a little of his once audacious manner.