“Oh piffle,” I said.  I am aware that this is slang, and does not belong in a Theme.  But I was driven to saying it.

I got through the crowd by using my elbows.  I am afraid I gave the Bishop quite a prod, and I caught Mr. Andrews on his rotateing waistcoat.  But I was desparate.

Alas, I was too late.

The caterer’s man, who had taken Patrick’s place in a hurry, was at the punch bowl, and father was gone.  I was just in time to see him take H. into his library and close the door.

Here words fail me.  I knew perfectly well that beyond that door H, whom I had invented and who therefore simply did not exist, was asking for my Hand.  I made up my mind at once to run away and go on the stage, and I had even got part way up the stairs, when I remembered that, with a dollar for the picture and five dollars for the violets and three dollars for the hat pin I had given Sis, and two dollars and a quarter for mother’s handkercheif case, I had exactly a dollar and seventy-five cents in the world.

I was trapped.

I went up to my room, and sat and waited.  Would father be violent, and throw H. out and then come upstairs, pale with fury and disinherit me?  Or would the whole Familey conspire together, when the people had gone, and send me to a convent?  I made up my mind, if it was the convent, to take the veil and be a nun.  I would go to nurse lepers, or something, and then, when it was too late, they would be sorry.

The stage or the convent, nun or actress?  Which?

I left the door open, but there was only the sound of revelry below.  I felt then that it was to be the convent.  I pinned a towel around my face, the way the nuns wear whatever they call them, and from the side it was very becoming.  I really did look like Julia Marlowe, especialy as my face was very sad and tradgic.

At something before seven every one had gone, and I heard Sis and mother come upstairs to dress for dinner.  I sat and waited, and when I heard father I got cold all over.  But he went on by, and I heard him go into mother’s room and close the door.  Well, I knew I had to go through with it, although my life was blasted.  So I dressed and went downstairs.

Father was the first down.  He came down whistling.

It is perfectly true.  I could not beleive my ears.

He approached me with a smileing face.

“Well, Bab,” he said, exactly as if nothing had happened, “have you had a nice day?”

He had the eyes of a bacilisk, that creature of Fable.

“I’ve had a lovely day, Father,” I replied.  I could be bacilisk-ish also.

There is a mirror over the drawing room mantle, and he turned me around until we both faced it.

“Up to my ears,” he said, referring to my heighth.  “And Lovers already!  Well, I daresay we must make up our minds to lose you.”

“I won’t be lost,” I declared, almost violently.  “Of course, if you intend to shove me off your hands, to the first Idiot who comes along and pretends a lot of stuff, I——­”