The father's eyes lit up with pride and affection as he gazed at the trim, straight figure and the glowing face. "You were just a little baby--so big." He measured a space of about two span with his hands. "That was your size then, for I know I thought your Uncle Argand might have made me counsel instead of McSheen. But he didn't. And that was McSheen's start." "He sold out," said the girl with decision. "Oh, no--I don't think he would do that. He is a lawyer." "Yes, he would. He's a horrid, old, disreputable rascal. I've always thought it, and now I know it. And I want you to get my old ladies' interest back for them." "I can't do that. No one can. It's too long ago. If they ever had a claim it's all barred, long ago." "It oughtn't to be--if it was stolen," persisted his daughter, "and it was." XV THE LADY OF THE VIOLETS Having decided that Mrs. Kale's did not present the best advantages, I determined to move to more suitable quarters. I chose a boarding-house, partly by accident and partly because it was in a semi-fashionable quarter which I liked, and I paid Mrs. Starling, the landlady, a decisive person, two weeks' board in advance, so as to have that long a lease at any rate, and a point from which to take my bearings. I had learned of the place through Kalender, who was deeply enamored of Miss Starling, a Byzantine-hued young lady, and who regarded the house somewhat as Adam is assumed to have regarded Eden after his banishment. Mrs. Starling was, in this case, the angel of the flaming sword. She had higher ambitions for Miss Starling. I had less than forty dollars left, and fifteen of that was borrowed next day by a fellow-boarder named Pushkin, who occupied the big front room adjoining my little back hall-room, and who had "forgotten to draw any money out of bank," he said, but would "return it the next day at dinner time," a matter he also forgot. I was particularly struck with him not because he had a title and was much kotowed to by our landlady and her boarders--especially the ladies, as because I recalled his name in juxtaposition with Miss Leigh's in the flamboyant account of the ball the night after I arrived. I was now ensconced in a little pigeon-hole of an office in a big building near the court-house, where, with a table, two chairs, and a dozen books, I had opened what I called my "law office," without a client or an acquaintance; but with abundant hopes. I found the old principle on which I had been reared set at naught, and that life in its entirety was a vast struggle based on selfishness.