Then Judith vanished out to the shop, where she was constructing a rabbit-house for the latest family.  Sylvia took Lawrence, yawning and rubbing his eyes, but fighting desperately against his sleepiness, upstairs for his nap.  When this task fell to Judith’s lot it was despatched with business-like promptness, but Lawrence had early discovered a temperamental difference between his two sisters, and Sylvia was seldom allowed to leave the small bed until she had paid tribute to her ever-present desire to please, in the shape of a story or a song.  On that day Buddy was more exacting than usual.  Sylvia told the story of Cinderella and sang, “A Frog He Would a-Wooing Go,” twice through, before the little boy’s eyes began to droop.  Even then, the clutch of his warm, moist fingers about her hand did not relax.  When she tried to slip her fingers out of his, his eyelids fluttered open and he tightened his grasp with a wilful frown.  So she sat still on the edge of his bed, waiting till he should be really asleep.

From the dining-room below her rose the sound of voices, or rather of one voice—­her father’s.  She wondered why it sounded so angry, and then, mixed with some unintelligible phrases—­“turned out on the street, in trouble—­in a foreign land—­Good God!” she caught Pauline’s name.  Oh yes, that must be the trouble.  Mother was telling Father about Pauline—­whatever it was she had done—­and he was as mad about it as Aunt Victoria had been.  If Aunt Victoria’s voice had sounded like that, she didn’t wonder that Arnold had hidden under the bed.  If she could have moved, she, too, would have run away, although the idea that she ought to do so did not occur to her.  There had been no secrets in that house.  The talk had always been for all to hear who would.

But when she tried again to slip her hand away from Buddy’s the little boy pulled at it hard, and half opening his eyes, said sleepily, “Sylvie stay with Buddy—­Sylvie stay—­” Sylvia yielded weakly, said:  “Yes—­sh! sh!  Sister’ll stay.  Go to sleep, Buddy.”

From below came the angry voice, quite loud now, so that she caught every queer-sounding word—­“righteous indignation indeed!  What else did she do, I’d like to know, when she wanted money.  The only difference was that she was cold-blooded enough to extract a legal status from the old reprobate she accosted.”

Sylvia heard her mother’s voice saying coldly, “You ought to be ashamed to use such a word!” and her father retort, “It’s the only word that expresses it!  You know as well as I do that she cared no more for Ephraim Smith than for the first man she might have solicited on the street—­nor so much!  God!  It makes me sick to look at her and think of the price she paid for her present damn Olympian serenity.”

Sylvia heard her mother begin to clear off the table.  There was a rattle of dishes through which her voice rose impatiently.  “Oh, Elliott, why be so melodramatic always, and spoil so much good language!  She did only what every girl brought up as she was, would have done.  And, anyhow, are you so very sure that in your heart you’re not so awfully hard on her because you’re envious of that very prosperity?”