DARLING MAMMA,—­I’ve just begun to find out really what to do here.  Cream doesn’t always rise to the top.  You remember the Josselyns, our quiet neighbors in town, that lived in the little house in the old-fashioned block opposite,—­Sue Josselyn, Effie’s schoolmate?  And how they used to tell me stories and keep me to nursery-tea?  Well, they’re the cream; they and Miss Craydocke.  Sue has been in the hospitals,—­two years, mamma!—­while I’ve been learning nocturnes, and going to Germans.  And Martha has been at home, sewing her face sharp; and they’re here now to get rounded out.  Well now, mamma, I want so—­a real dish of mountains and cream, if you ever heard of such a thing!  I want to take a wagon, and invite a party as I did my little one to Minster Rock, and go through the hills,—­be gone as many days as you will send me money for.  And I want you to take the money from that particular little corner of your purse where my carpet and wall-paper and curtains, that were to new-furnish my room on my leaving school, are metaphorically rolled up.  There’s plenty there, you know; for you promised me my choice of everything, and I had fixed on that lovely pearl-gray paper at ——­’s, with the ivy and holly pattern, and the ivy and scarlet-geranium carpet that was such a match.  I’ll have something cheaper, or nothing at all, and thank you unutterably, if you’ll only let me have my way in this.  It will do me so much good, mamma!  More than you’ve the least idea of.  People can do without French paper and Brussels carpets, but everybody has a right to mountain and sea and cloud glory,—­only they don’t half of them get it, and perhaps that’s the other half’s lookout!

I know you’ll understand me, mamma, particularly when I talk sense; for you always understood my nonsense when nobody else did.  And I’m going to do your faith and discrimination credit yet.

Your bad child,—­with just a small, hidden savor of grace in her, being your child,—­

ASENATH SAXON.

CHAPTER XVI.

“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL US?”

Saturday was a day of hammering, basting, draping, dressing, rehearsing, running from room to room.  Upstairs, in Mrs. Green’s garret, Leslie Goldthwaite and Dakie Thayne, with a third party never before introduced upon the stage, had a private practicing; and at tea-time, when the great hall was cleared, they got up there with Sin Saxon and Frank Scherman, locked the doors, and in costume, with regular accompaniment of bell and curtain, the performance was repeated.

Dakie Thayne was stage-manager and curtain-puller; Sin Saxon and Frank Scherman represented the audience, with clapping and stamping, and laughter that suspended both; making as nearly the noise of two hundred as two could:  this being an essential part of the rehearsal in respect to the untried nerves of the debutant, which might easily be a little uncertain.