"Nelly," said Tommy, wheedlingly, and shaking the lock of the closet, "I wish you'd give me some. I'm real sirsty." "Some what?" asked Helen, very willing to compromise. "Some w-a-t-e-r. I'm so sirsty." "Pronounce it, Tommy, and you shall come out and have some." "I don't know how to," was the atrocious answer. "And some chicken-broth as well as some water, if you'll only tell me what those five letters spell." But there was nothing but silence in reply from Tommy, and Helen resumed her song. "It's real damp in here," said Tommy pretty soon, beginning to cough furiously. "I'm getting a stiff neck." "You have one already," said Helen; and, laying little Sarah down, she went to put on her apron, to attend to her stew, to bring in the cloth and the tray of dishes, and to spread the supper-table in the warm room,--set out near the fire, the worn white linen, the sparse silver, the rare and gay old china, of which they used every day what would have decked out a modern drawing-room, all clean and glittering as if viands were various and plentiful as color and sparkle. That all done, again Cinderella sat down before the fire. "'Elen!" said Tommy then in a muffled tone, having given the door another premonitory shake, and as if his darkness induced metaphysics, "how many yesterdays have there been and how many to-morrows are there going to be?" "I'll tell you, Tommy, when you tell me what those letters spell." And again in response there was silence on the part of the closet, broken by occasional kicks that shook the door, and even caused the old panel to stir in its worm-eaten setting of oaken wainscot. As Helen looked up after the silence that followed Tommy's demonstration, while the panel yet slightly stirred, it seemed to her that a shiver ran over the lady painted there; she remembered the ghost-stories, it made a shiver run over her herself. She rose and went to look out of the window and see if there were no sign of the chaise,--it was hardly time for Margaret yet. Then she returned, and her fascinated eyes caught again the eyes of the old Colonial Governor's lady, that lady who was her mother many generations removed. It was a pale face painted there, as if the painter had seen it only by moonlight,--dark eyes in which the lustre lay with an effect of restless, searching radiance, and the delicate aquiline nose and thin and haughty lip spoke of a woman capable of acting a secret in her day, and keeping it long after, Helen thought. Whenever she caught the eye of that portrait,--and so curiously well was it painted, that she never looked at it without catching the eye,--the lady shadowed there seemed to return a glance of defiance, and her lip wore a curve of triumph. She kept one hand clasped over her crimson vest embroidered with its golden tangles and purfles; perhaps in the other her secret hung hidden out of sight. Now, in the dancing firelight, the ruby that lay on the dame's forehead seemed to flicker like a live jewel