"He's like a boy out for a holiday," her mother answered. "I had no idea Dr. Conrad could manage such a colour as that; I thought he was pallid and studious." "Poor dear. _We_ should be pallid and studious if it was cases all day long, and his ma at intervals." "Do you know, kitten darling, I can't help thinking perhaps we do that poor woman an injustice...." "--Can't you?" Thus Sally in a parenthetic voice-- "... and that she really isn't such a very great humbug after all!" "Why not?" "Because she would be such a _very_ great humbug, don't you see, chick?" "Why shouldn't she? Somebody must, or there'd be no such thing." "Why should there be any such thing?" "Because of the word. Somebody must, or there'd be no one to hook it to.... Have they stopped, I wonder, or are they going to begin again?" This referred to the Ethiopian banjos afar. "I do declare they're going to sing Pesky Jane, and it's nearly twelve o'clock!" "Never mind _them_! How came _you_ to know all the vulgar nigger-songs?... I was going to say. It's very difficult to believe it's quite all humbug when one hears her talk about her son and his welfare, and his prospects and...." "I know what she talked about. When her dear son marries, she's going to devote herself to him and her dear daughter that will be. Wasn't that it?" "Yes; but then she couldn't say more than that all she had would be theirs, and she would take her to her bosom, etcetera. Could she?" "She'll have to pull a long way!" The vulgar child's mind has flown straight to the Goody's outline in profile. She is quite incorrigible. "But wasn't that what old Mr. Turveydrop said, or very nearly? Of course, one has to consider the parties and make allowance." "Sallykin, what a madcap you are! You don't care _what_ you say." "We-e-ell! there's nothing in that.... But look here, mammy darling. Did that good woman in all she said to-night--all the time she was jawing--did she once lose sight of her meritorious attitude?" "It may only be a _facon de parler_--a sort of habit." "But it isn't. Jeremiah says so. We've talked it over, us two. He says he wouldn't like his daughter--meaning me--to marry poor Prosy, because of the Goody." "Are you sure he meant you? Did you ask him?" "No, because I wasn't going to twit Jeremiah with being only step. We kept it dark who was what. But, of course, he meant me. Like a submarine telegraph." Sally stopped a moment in gravity. Then she said: "Mother dear!" "What, kitten?" "What a pity it is Jeremiah is only step! Just think how nice if he'd been real. Now, if you'd only met twenty years sooner...." A nettle to grasp presented itself--a bad one. Rosalind seized it bodily. "I shouldn't have had my kitten," she said. "I see. I should have been somebody else. But that wouldn't have mattered to me."