“Then don’t meddle in what you don’t understand. If I say I’m going to be drowned before two years are out, then it means I’ve studied the question and come to my own conclusions and resigned myself to what must be. And that’s that, isn’t it? So try and not talk so silly, young lady.” Mr. Askin had bought enough books, according to his calculations, to outlast him and leave a trifle over for his widow. These had at one time filled every room in the house; but as soon as they were sold the empty rooms were furnished with a few odds and ends and let. The top stories were now completely void of books, which was how Nancy managed to rent one of the garrets in the roof for the sum of seven shillings a week. The other garret was inhabited by Maudie Pridgeon, the Askins’ maid-of-all-work, who could not do enough for Nancy once she heard she was a real actress. “Oh, Miss O’Finn,” she begged. “I wonder if you’d be kind enough to hear me recite _The Lighthouse-Keeper’s Daughter_ some afternoon, and tell me if I’ve got a chance to get on the stage myself. It’s the dream of my life. I may not be a Sarah Burnhard or an Elling Terry, but it’s in me, Miss O’Finn. I feel shore it’s in me. Sometimes I feel I could burst with what’s in me. I was afraid it might be wind for a time after I’d been reading about some medicine or other. But it ain’t, Miss O’Finn, it’s acting. It is reelly. So some time, when we have a moment to ourselves, I do wish you’d hear me recite and give me a bit of good advice. And of course I can rely on you not to say a word to Mrs. Askin about my ambishing or she might pass some nasty remark about it. She never moves out of the back room behind the shop herself, and she’d never believe as I might be a star hiding my light under a bushel.”