'I wanted her to go with me to the dance at the Mechanics' Institute next week,' said Dora. 'Mrs. Alderman Head would have taken us both. It's very nice and respectable. I didn't think uncle would mind. But Lucy's sure he will.' 'Sure! Of course I'm sure,' said Lucy sharply. 'I've heard him talk about dancing in a way to make anybody sick. If he only knew all the dancing we had at Pestalozzi House!' 'Does he think all dancing wrong?' inquired David. 'Yes--unless it's David dancing before the Ark, or some such nonsense,' replied Lucy, with the same petulant gloom. David laughed out. Then he fell into a brown study, one hand playing with his tea-cup, an irrepressable smile still curving about his mouth. Dora, observing him across the table, could not but remember other assistants of Uncle Purcell whom she has seen sitting in that same place, and the airs which Miss Purcell in her rare holidays had given herself towards those earlier young men. And now, this young man, whenever Purcell himself was out of the way, was master of the place. Anyone could see that, so long as he was there, Lucy was sensitively conscious of him in all that she said or did. She did not long endure his half-mocking silence now. 'You see, Dora,' she began again, with an angry glance towards him, 'father's worse than ever just now. He's been so aggravated.' 'Yes,' said Dora timidly. She perfectly understood what was meant, but she shrank from pursuing the subject. But David looked up. 'I should be very sorry, I'm sure, Miss Purcell, to get in your way at all, or cause you any unpleasantness, if that's what you mean. I don't think you'll be annoyed with me long.' He spoke with a boyish exaggerated dignity. It became him, however, for his fine and subtle physique somehow supported and endorsed it. Both girls started. Lucy looked suddenly as miserable as she had before looked angry. But in her confused state of feeling she renewed her attack. 'I don't understand anything about it,' she said, with plaintive incoherence. 'Only I can't _think_ why people should always be making disturbances. Dora! Doesn't _everybody_ you know think it wicked to go to the Hall of Science?' She drew herself up peremptorily. David resumed the half smiling, half meditative attitude which had provoked her before. Dora looked from one to the other, a pure bright color rising in her cheek. 'I don't know anything about that,' she said in a low voice. 'I don't think that would matter, Lucy. But, oh, I do wish father wouldn't go--and Mr. Grieve wouldn't go.'