"No, no!" interrupted Sybil, "put them on the platter with the chicken; cover them well with sauce and drop a tiny morsel of parsley on each piece to mark it; and we will coach papa, Dorrie, to help us to the parsley marked portions without letting the old dear know just why, and with a little care on our part no one need guess we are not eating chicken. That will leave the whole of it for the gentlemen, and Mr. Bulkley can have the second helping he will want, for you can cook a chicken à la Maryland as well as any aunty, Lena!" Then they agreed that neither one of them would care for salad that day, but might freely indulge in coffee, though sharing very delicately in dessert. And so, patting Lena's sturdy shoulder in sign of their trust and gratitude, they picked up from the grass their shabby old prayer-books, and presently made demure appearance, coming slowly up the steep path that led to the weary, sagging, old porch. And William Henry Bulkley, who for the last half hour had been calling himself every kind of a fool, ran his greedy old eyes over the tempting loveliness of Dorothy and changed his mind suddenly, feeling that the boredom caused by John and Letitia Lawton was not too high a price to pay for the pleasure of loitering by the side of this wonderful girl. And so he made his devoirs in most expansive fashion; cast dust in Mr. Lawton's mild blue eyes by referring, in quite a fatherly tone, to his daughters as little Dorrie and Sybbie, was deferential in the extreme to Sybil, and confessed to a distinct recollection of every horse, every equipage, of Mrs. Lawton's ownership in the past, even to one or two she had owned only in her imagination. But never, she observed, did he for one moment lose sight of Dorothy. At last Sybil, like a pitying angel, placed herself between Mr. Bulkley and her mother's slippers, and covered that lady's retreat to her own room to arrange herself for dinner. And it was Sybil who had sternly to replace the bandage and coach the hungry and irate mother in her part of delicate sufferer, closing the scene with the words: "I know, darling, you're too proud to allow anyone to guess at the straits we are in." Then, kissing the hungry tears from her mother's eyes, she added: "Just say to yourself, now and then, 'Eggs! eggs!' and that will keep your courage up--that and the knowledge that you are the only woman alive who can wear a handkerchief about her forehead and yet look pretty." And Letitia simpered, and sprinkled a little bay-rum on her hair to suggest headache; ate a handful of crackers to take off the sharp edge of her keen appetite, and languidly descended to the distinctly musty parlor.