I want
Mrs. Mellot. You go to the window with Bowie."
Bowie and Claude shrugged their shoulders at each other, and departed.
"Now, Mrs. Mellot, I can't help looking up to you as a mother."
"Complimentary to my youth," says Sabina, who always calls herself
young when she is called old, and old when she is called young.
"I didn't mean to be rude. But one does long to open one's heart. I
never had any mother to talk to, you know; and I can't tell my aunt;
and Valencia is so flighty; and I thought you would give me one chance
more. Don't laugh at me, I say. I am really past laughing at."
"I see you are, you poor creature," says Sabina, melting; and a long
conversation follows, while Claude and Bowie exchange confidences, and
arrive at no result beyond the undeniable assertion; "it is a very bad
job."
Presently Sabina comes out, and Scoutbush calls cheerfully from the
sofa:--
"Bowie, get my bath and things to dress; and order me the cab in half
an hour. Good-bye, you dear people, I shall never thank you enough."
Away go Claude and Sabina in a hack-cab.
"What have you done?"
"Given him what he entreated for--another chance with Marie."
"It will only madden him all the more. Why let him try, when you know
it is hopeless."
"Why, I had not the heart to refuse, that's the truth; and besides, I
don't know that it is hopeless."
"All the naughtier of you, to let him run the chance of making a fool
of himself.
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