Gwynne walked away in a state of exaltation that obliterated from his mind all such sordid and petty considerations as twenty-four hundred dollars of rent in arrears. At the end of the avenue he turned to look back, and saw a light spring up in the bedroom window he knew to be Mrs. Pallinder's; he walked on slowly, watching it with what high-coloured and high-flown fancies! Miranda, I am afraid, is a name that defeats the muse; but Gwynne continued in this Romeo attitude and meditation until he crashed into a weary, homing labourer, a resident of Bucktown, most probably, faring along through the twilight with a whitewash bucket and brushes. "Hy-yah! Keerful, cahn't yo'? Yo' 'd oughta look whar yo's g'wine, boss!" Gwynne started at the words; he ought to look where he was going! He went on, slowly, frowning a little, with his head bent. CHAPTER ELEVEN Lent dragged or slipped or scurried along according to the varying tempers of those that watched it go; of late years the speed of its passage has increased noticeably, it seems to me; successive Lents shove one another off the stage with an alarming celerity. But most of us voted it dismally slow in those days. A church entertainment was given, in which Mrs. Pallinder figured in tableaux as _Ruth_, with white draperies, her hair bound up with fillets, and a sheaf of wheat (it was really pampas grass) in her beautiful bare white arms. She looked, undoubtedly, as much like _Ruth_ as she had like _Astarte_; that is to say, not at all. But people were unfeignedly delighted this time, and not without reason; the curtain had to be rung up repeatedly on "Ruth and Boaz." I thought, to be truthful, that her features seemed hard and sharp in the strong calcium-light; perhaps she was a little too old to impersonate a character like Ruth. But Teddy Johns assured me vehemently that she was ideal. "Beau'ful creature, Mis' Pallinder--_hic_--s'prisin'--Ruth--'Starte--Greek Slave--no, no, didn't mean that, of course--_hic_--Greek statue--always doin' somethin'--Pallinders, somethin' new, all time!" he said, meeting me in the passageway of Trinity Parish House, where the entertainment was given. I do not know where he had been; it is generally difficult to draw young men to church-tableaux, and there were not many there. Teddy had an air of surprise at finding himself in the audience; his face was very much flushed, he laughed loud and inappropriately; and Judge Lewis came with a grave face, and took him by the arm and pulled him away, muttering some apology to me. Judge Lewis was a vestryman; I saw him talking to some of the others afterwards, and their grey heads wagged solemnly; the judge could not have been telling one of those humorous anecdotes for which he was so celebrated.