"Would you mind, Peggy," said John, deprecatingly, "if I left you for a few minutes? I can't half see what he is drawing, and there is a vacant front seat. I'll only stay five minutes." "Certainly, dear," said Marjory with sleepy amiability: "stay up there till he has finished, and then come back for me. I am not at all afraid." "Oh no: I will not do that," answered John, considerately, "but I do want to go for a few minutes." So away he went, and, once up there, he of course "took no note of time," and Marjory was left to her own devices. These were few and simple, but small causes sometimes produce great effects. She had on those gloves, of course. She never could recall that part of the evening very distinctly. A confused recollection that she found the pillar very comfortable for a while; that finally the ridges in it hurt her cheek; that she had one or two lucid intervals between her naps, in one of which she concluded that it would be better to take those gloves off for fear of marking her face; and that while she was doing so she caught a sentence or two of the lecture--something like this: "This one essential point of difference is in itself convincing proof of the theory which I hold. The difference in the formation of the hands is a difficulty which no theory of development can overcome." These few insignificant items were all which remained in her memory: then the little gentleman's voice gradually took to her ears the form of a chant: his "theory," as the simple rustic said about a matter less abstruse, "might be wrong, but it was awful soothin'," and pleasant dreams of having four hands, all available, and not of the objectionable sort whose bones the professor was dangling, beguiled the time for Marjory--how long she knew not. What woke her? Surely somebody laughed? She started up: the lecture was over at last; John, with a penitent face, was hastening back to her; the people who had sat nearest her were gone, and so were her gloves! "What, in thunder--" said John forcibly, looking at her face in blank amazement. "Oh, I didn't mind," she answered mildly, thinking he was apologizing. "I believe I have had a little nap, Jack, but I can't find my gloves: will you look under the next seat, please?" "My dear child," said John, shaking with suppressed laughter, "your face has 'found your gloves' with a vengeance! It's as black as--anything. Can't you put your veil down till we get out of this?" Obediently hiding her countenance, Marjory, bewildered and still not quite awake, followed John after a few minutes' further and fruitless search for the missing gloves. The brisk walk home through the frosty air restored her consciousness, and when John led her up to the looking-glass, kindly removing her veil at the same time, consciousness took the form of wrath.