The portieres were drawn aside to admit Mr. Cumberland in smoking jacket and slippers, yawning and very much bored. He was a large, heavy looking man, very dependent on outside things for his entertainment. Failing to attract his wife's attention, he lounged over to the window, and drew aside the velvet curtain. The atmosphere was heavy, and the light in front of the house appeared to hold itself aloof from the environment in a sulky, self-contained way; all down the street, the other lamps looked like the ghosts of lights that had burned and died in past ages. A little girl with a bag of apples in her frost-bitten hands came hastily around the corner, and, going with her head down against the sleet, butted into an elderly gentleman, with a big umbrella, who was driving along in an opposite direction. The gentleman gave the child an indignant shove which caused her to seat herself violently upon the pavement; the bag banged hard against the bricks and delivered up its trust, and the apples scudded away into the gutter. Cecil laughed amusedly as the little creature picked herself up crying, and proceeded to institute search for the missing treasure. A kindly policeman, who doubtless had children of his own, stopped on his beat, and helped her, wiping the mud from the rescued fruit with his handkerchief, and securing all again with a newspaper and a stout twine string which he took from his pocket; then they went away together, the officer carrying the bundle and the child trotting contentedly in the lee of him. They seemed to be old acquaintances. Nothing else happened along to amuse him, so Mr. Cumberland let the velvet folds fall back in their place and came over to the fire. He had been suffering with a heavy cold, and found confinement to the house in the last degree irksome. His wife was too much engrossed with her book to be willing to lay it aside for his entertainment, and he spurned her suggestion of the evening paper, so there was nothing for it but to sulk over a cigar and audibly curse the weather. A sharp ring at the door-bell, tardily answered by a servant, and then footsteps approached the parlor door. Husband and wife looked up with interest--with expectation. Was it a visitor? No; only the servant with a telegram which he handed Mr. Cumberland, and then withdrew. Cecil turned the thin envelope in his hand inquisitively. He was fond of having every thing pass through his own hands--of knowing all the ins and outs, the minutiae of daily happenings. "What is it?" questioned Ethel, indolently. "A dispatch for you. Shall I open it?" "If you like. I hate dispatches. They always suggest unpleasant possibilities. It's a local, so I guess it's from my aunt, about that rubbishing dinner of hers." Cecil tore open the envelope and read the few words it contained with a lengthening visage; then he let his hand fall, and stared blankly across at his wife.