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Such was the child separated from me by this portentous history, a narrow passage, and a closed nursery door. Presently, however, the door was partly opened again as if to admit the air. The crying had ceased, but in its place the monotonous Voice of Conscience, for the moment personated by Sarah Walker’s nursemaid, kept alive a drowsy recollection of Sarah Walker’s transgressions.

“You see,” said the Voice, “what a dreadful thing it is for a little girl to go on as you do. I am astonished at you, Sarah Walker. So is everybody; so is the good ladies next door; so is the kind gentleman opposite; so is all! Where you expect to go to, ‘Evin only knows! How you expect to be forgiven, saints alone can tell! But so it is always, and yet you keep it up. And wouldn’t you like it different, Sarah Walker? Wouldn’t you like to have everybody love you? Wouldn’t you like them good ladies next door, and that nice gentleman opposite, all to kinder rise up and say, ‘Oh, what a dear good little girl Sarah Walker is?'” The interpolation of a smacking sound of lips, as if in unctuous anticipation of Sarah Walker’s virtue, here ensued–“Oh, what a dear, good, sw-e-et, lovely little girl Sarah Walker is!”

There was a dead silence. It may have been fancy, but I thought that some of the doors in the passage creaked softly as if in listening expectation. Then the silence was broken by a sigh. Had Sarah Walker ingloriously succumbed? Rash and impotent conclusion!

“I don’t,” said Sarah Walker’s voice, slowly rising until it broke on the crest of a mountainous sob, “I–don’t–want–’em–to–love me. I–don’t want–’em–to say–what a–dear–good–little girl–Sarah Walker is!” She caught her breath. “I–want–’em–to say–what a naughty–bad–dirty–horrid–filthy–little girl Sarah Walker is–so I do. There!”

The doors slammed all along the passages. The dreadful issue was joined. I softly crossed the hall and looked into Sarah Walker’s room.

The light from a half-opened shutter fell full upon her rebellious little figure. She had stiffened herself in a large easy-chair into the attitude in which she had been evidently deposited there by the nurse whose torn-off apron she still held rigidly in one hand. Her shapely legs stood out before her, jointless and inflexible to the point of her tiny shoes–a POSE copied with pathetic fidelity by the French doll at her feet. The attitude must have been dreadfully uncomfortable, and maintained only as being replete with some vague insults to the person who had put her down, as exhibiting a wild indecorum of silken stocking. A mystified kitten–Sarah Walker’s inseparable–was held as rigidly under one arm with equal dumb aggressiveness. Following the stiff line of her half-recumbent figure, her head suddenly appeared perpendicularly erect–yet the only mobile part of her body. A dazzling sunburst of silky hair, the color of burnished copper, partly hid her neck and shoulders and the back of the chair. Her eyes were a darker shade of the same color–the orbits appearing deeper and larger from the rubbing in of habitual tears from long wet lashes. Nothing so far seemed inconsistent with her infelix reputation, but, strange to say, her other features were marked by delicacy and refinement, and her mouth–that sorely exercised and justly dreaded member–was small and pretty, albeit slightly dropped at the corners.

The immediate effect of my intrusion was limited solely to the nursemaid. Swooping suddenly upon Sarah Walker’s too evident deshabille, she made two or three attempts to pluck her into propriety; but the child, recognizing the cause as well as the effect, looked askance at me and only stiffened herself the more. “Sarah Walker, I’m shocked.”

“It ain’t HIS room anyway,” said Sarah, eying me malevolently. “What’s he doing here?”