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Jill lay asleep in all her splendor, the bonny "Prince" just lifting the veil to wake her with a kiss, and all about them the court in its nap of a hundred years. The "King" and "Queen" dozing comfortably on the throne; the maids of honor, like a garland of nodding flowers, about the couch; the little page, unconscious of the blow about to fall, and the fool dreaming, with his mouth wide open.
His eyes were a little foggy, for his brain was adjusting itself but slowly to the novel situation. "Mine." "Oh, yours! I thought as much!" "Well," said Jill, "I'll go back and tell them that you will not do what we ask. We will keep our make-up on in case you change your mind." She turned away. "Come back!" Jill proceeded toward the staircase. As she went, a husky voice spoke in her ear.
Some expert hand had flicked the delicate flesh off the back in a criss-cross pattern; what was left of the feet lay in a pool of blood, the deep red of which stretched across the hall far into the distance, showing the path along which the child, left by her torturers for dead, had dragged herself. "Poor little, little thing!" whispered Jill, as she made to raise the body in her arms.
"Never trust a man further than you can see him," had remarked the agreeable rattle, who had never had reason to complain of want of respect on the part of any man with whom she may have been temporarily isolated. "And did you notice how her eyes flashed when she seized Jill from Lowther? They're usually a sort of yellow. Then, as perhaps you saw, they seemed to burst into a fierce glare."
It was true the sun had been shining before her arrival, but in a flabby, weak-minded way, not with the brilliance it had acquired immediately he heard her voice. "If you don't mind waiting for about three minutes while I have a shower and dress . . ." "Oh, is the entertainment over?" asked Jill, disappointed. "I always arrive too late for everything."
An unusually pretty flock of sweetsome débutantes had thinned the bachelor ranks, and Jill Briggs's youngest boy died of some childish ailment, disturbing Beatrice more than she admitted, for some reason, and making her own thoughts poor company.
The door had been opened by a tall, thin, flat-chested girl, whose pasty face was plentifully peppered with pimples. The only room to let was on the ground floor at the back of the house; it was meagre, poorly furnished, but clean. Mavis paid a week's rent in advance and was left to her own devices. For all the presence of her baby and Jill, Mavis felt woefully alone.
But for once Frank was mistaken; the mystery did not come out, and Jack worked like a beaver all that week, as orders poured in when Jill and Annette showed their elegant cards; for, as everybody knows, if one girl has a new thing all the rest must, whether it is a bow on the top of her head, a peculiar sort of pencil, or the latest kind of chewing-gum.
"Couldn't you buy some, then?" said Molly, smoothing her crumpled morning-glories, with a sigh. "Who ever heard of a fellow having any money left the last day of the month?" demanded Gus, severely. "Or girls either. I spent all mine in ribbon and paper for my baskets, and now they are of no use. It's a shame!" lamented Jill, while Merry began to thin out her full baskets to fill the empty ones.
"Rummy you should say that," he ejaculated. "I was telling her exactly the same thing myself only this evening." He hesitated. "I fancy I can see what you're driving at, old thing. The watchword is 'What ho, the mater! yes, no? You've begun to get a sort of idea that if Jill doesn't watch her step, she's apt to sink pretty low in the betting, what? I know exactly what you mean!
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