would rather try to write—then you could send your manuscript to the publishers and not go outside of your own home— "That is," she added, reluctantly, "if—you have plenty of stamps."

And just then John Lawton lowered the paper he had been reading, as he sat at the far end of the porch, and asked: "Girls, have you noticed a young woman who rides past here on horseback evenings, generally without a groom?"

"Yes!" cried the girls. "Sometimes she comes scrambling down that rocky lane below us," said Sybil, "but she never does that on the big chestnut—he'd break his legs."

"Nice horse, that," commented Mr. Lawton. "But do you know who she is?"

"No, papa, do you?" asked Dorothy, turning the last hem.

"Y—e—s," was the slow answer. "I was looking at the swelling on the leg of that black police-horse last night, and I told him—the policeman, I mean—that a bandage was needed, and just then along came the young woman, riding a small bay at almost a dead run. I thought at first there was work for the policeman to do, but the rider touched her cap as she rushed past, and the officer guessed my thought, for he said: 'No; that ain't no runaway! I suspect the bay's been a bit unruly; anyway, she never rides at such a spanking gait as that except in the cool of the evening and when the roads are quiet.' He seemed to know the lady so well that I asked if she lived in the neighborhood, and he said: 'Why, good Lord! Don't you know who she is? Why, that's Claire Morrell, the actress.'"

With a cry Sybil sprang to her feet, wide-eyed and palpitating with excitement, while Dorothy exclaimed, reproachfully: "Oh, papa, why did you not tell us before? Where does she live? Now don't say you don't know and so reduce us to the necessity of interviewing the policeman for ourselves!"

Mr. Lawton gently pinched his bandaged finger, to see how much it was hurt, before answering: "Miss Morrell, who is Mrs. Barton in private life, you know, lives as the crow flies exactly opposite us on Riverdale Avenue, at a place called The Beeches."

"Oh! oh!" cried Dorothy. "Let's go and tell mamma whom she has for a neighbor—she will be so interested! She used to be quite proud of living near a former residence of Miss Kemble, the English actress. Come, Sybil dear—why, are you asleep?" For her sister had been standing, staring dumbly into space. Now she leaned forward and whispered, rapidly:

"Dorrie! Dorrie! Here is the answer to your question, and here is my one chance! This woman has power to help me, and she shall use it—yes, if I have to go upon my knees to her! Her hand shall open to me the stage-door of the theatre!"

CHAPTER III

SHOPPING UNDER DIFFICULTIES

Early in their second week at Woodsedge it became evident that someone would have to go to the city to do some very necessary shopping, and a great gloom descended and enwrapped the Lawtons in consequence. The ancient legend says that the prospect of a shopping expedition ever fills the female soul with wild, unreasoning joy, which is a too general and too positive prediction. But that is the trouble with most legends, composed as they are of a little truth, much imagination, and more sweeping assertion; and I have no doubt this last irritating quality has caused the destruction of many a legend that was both beautiful and poetic. Now, fable to the contrary notwithstanding, shopping is not an unalloyed joy—always fatiguing—often a positive penance. It is sometimes a pleasure, and on rare occasions it may become an absolute delight, say, for instance, when a woman is young and pretty and has a full purse. The knowledge of her own beauty and her ability to adorn it will make the selecting, the choosing, the trying, the adapting, the decision, the retraction, the fluttering, and the hesitating—all delightful. Or when a woman who has herself passed the period of coquettish dressing shops from a full purse for those she loves, whose tastes and desires she knows perfectly, with what beaming eyes she will hover over the best, the rarest, comparing, selecting without a thought of price, only seeking beauty and quality—such shopping is unqualified pleasure.

But the gates of this shopping Paradise were closed against the Lawtons, and Sybil and Dorothy, like two made-over, rebound, cotton-backed little Peris, stood and wept as they shook vainly at the bars. Mr. Lawton had in all good faith offered to go to the city and do their errands for them, but his services had been promptly declined, though with many qualifying pats and strokes from Sybil and a violet boutonnière from Dorothy, who had remarked, as she tied it with a blade of grass: "Poor papa—he would come home with barely half the list filled."

"Worse than that," said Sybil. "Poor papa would have come home plucked bare to his innocent old breast."

"Yes!" sighed Dorothy, "someone would surely swindle him out of part of his money, if he went down by his tempting old self."

It was very difficult for the sisters to go out together, because of the lack of appropriate clothing, yet neither one wished to have Mrs. Lawton as a shopping companion. Not that they were lacking in affection for their mother—far from it; but, truth to tell, she was a very silly old person, who, like a certain royal house of France, never learned anything and never forgot anything; and when she walked through the shopping district with her girls, she invariably made them wish they had never been born. She had such a dreadful habit of stopping before some show window and remarking, in a high shrill voice: "Yes, that's fairly good, but it's not to be compared with what I had when," etc., etc. Or she would sit at a counter, and, with eye-glasses on nose, carefully examine forty-cent pairs of cotton stockings, describing meantime to the clerk the exact style of silk stockings she used to wear years before, closing the incident with a condescending: "You may give me three pairs of these—though, to confess the truth, my foot has never yet become accustomed to such coarse web." Small wonder the girls did not care to shop with their mamma.

Therefore, they had spent an entire day making the preparations that were necessary if they were to go to the city together. Dorothy had pulled apart a black velvet bow from an old hat, steamed it free of wrinkles, and had made a fairly decent belt, and hours had gone to the minute stitching of her gloves; while Sybil's wrath had been aroused by the necessity of inking her purplish boot heels.

"No other shoes but mine go like that," she grumbled. "One would suppose my skirts had teeth to gnaw my heels," and at Dorothy's quick laughter Sybil attacked her with her inky bit of cotton, and their wild struggle so aroused Yellow Dick that he instantly assumed the horrid front of war—quivering his drooping wings, extending his neck, with wee beak open an eighth of an inch wide, and fierce crest rising and lowering rapidly. He felt himself to be a terrifying object, and nothing short of three fat hemp seeds, held to him between the lovely lips of Sybil could induce him to accept peace.

"What a quick-tempered little wretch Dick has become of late," said Dorothy.

"Oh, well—never mind his small tantrums, so long as he doesn't begin to tell about what a splendid cage he used to have."

"He can't," laughed Dorothy, "for he was hatched as well as brought up in this old cage—he doesn't know any other."

"Thank Heaven for that!" responded Sybil, who then ran to the window, crying:

"There she goes, Dorrie!" and her sister understood at once that "she" was that