"No, of course you are not, Arthur. I did not mean to imply any such thing," Anna rejoined, hastily. "I was only-- Come into my room. Amy is fast asleep by this time, and if she is not she has a headache, and you might as well try to consult with an infant in arms as Amy with a headache. And something has to be done." "Yes, you are right, Anna," Carroll replied, with a heavy sigh. "Those people will all go when they get tired of waiting. There is no use in our bothering with them any more to-night. Come in." Anna led the way into her room, and closed the door. A lamp burned dimly on the dresser amid a confusion of laces and ribbons. The whole room looked in a soft foam of dainty disorder. Anna did not turn the light up. She stood looking at her brother in the half-light, and her face was at once angry and tender. "Well?" said she, with a sigh of desperate inquiry. "Well?" rejoined Carroll. "What next?" "The Lord knows!" "Something has to be done. We are up against a dead wall again. And for some reason it strikes me as a deader wall than ever before." Carroll nodded. "We cannot stay in Banbridge any longer?" Anna said, interrogatively. "We may have to," Carroll replied, curtly. "You mean?" "There may be a little difficulty about getting out. We could not leave the State, anyhow, and--" "And what? We can go somewhere else in the State, I suppose. I am not particularly in love with this section of the union, but it all makes little difference after one reaches a certain point." "Poor old girl!" said Carroll. Anna looked at him, and her eyes suffused and her mouth quivered. Then she smiled her usual smile of mocking courage, even bravado. "Oh, well," said she, "I have faced the situation and chewed my cud of experience for a good many years now, and I am used to it. I may even end up by tasting the sweet in the bitter." "You had as hard an experience in another line as I had. I don't know but it was harder." "No harder, I reckon," Anna replied, almost indifferently. "It was the same thing--the doll stuffed with sawdust, and all that; you with a friend, and I with a lover. Well, it is all over now." "It isn't; that is the worst of it," Carroll said, gloomily. "I don't see why." "A sequence is never over. There is even all eternity for it." "Well, the first of the sequence is over, anyhow. All we have to consider is the succeeding stages." "That is about enough." Anna laughed. "I agree with you there, dear. Well, I suppose the stage of the sequence for immediate consideration is the feasibility of emerging into the next stage. You think it is likely to be more difficult for the wandering tribe of Carroll to make their exodus with grace and dignity than usual?" "It rather looks that way now." "I suppose that promoting business, that business transacted in the New York office, got you into rather hotter waters than usual." Carroll nodded. "There _was_ an office, I suppose."