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"Well, I did what you told me to do," Theron Ware remarked to Sister Soulsby, when at last they found themselves alone in the sitting-room after the midday meal.
Celia lighted some of the high, thick tapers in these candelabra, and opened the top of the casket. Theron saw with surprise that she had uncovered the keyboard of a piano.
The face of the woman, her manner and slatternly aspect, and the general effect of her belongings, bespoke squalid ignorance and poverty. Watching her, Theron had felt curiously interested in the performance. In one sense, it was scarcely more human than the spectacle of a cat licking her kittens, or a cow giving suck to her calf. Yet, in another, was there anything more human?
Theron asked her many questions about these and other far-off cities, and her answers were all so pat and showed so keen and clear an eye that he began in spite of himself to think of her with a certain admiration. She in turn plied him with inquiries about the principal pew-holders and members of his congregation their means, their disposition, and the measure of their devotion.
He clung insistently to the memory of these evidences. They helped him to resist a disagreeable tendency to feel himself an intruder, an outsider, among these pianoforte experts. When it was all over, Celia waved the others aside, and talked with Theron. "I suppose you want me to tell you the truth," she said. "There's nothing here really good.
"It is too sad a thing to talk about. But there! it is my load, and I bear it, and there's nothing more to be said." Theron drew a heavy sigh, and let his fingers toy abstractedly with a ribbon on the outer edge of Celia's penumbra of apparel. "No," she said. "We mustn't snivel, and we mustn't sulk.
MARCH HARES. By Harold Frederic, author of "The Damnation of Theron Ware," "In the Valley," etc. 16mo. Cloth, special binding, $1.25. "One of the most cheerful novels we have chanced upon for many a day. It has much of the rapidity and vigor of a smartly written farce, with a pervading freshness a smartly written farce rarely possesses.... A book decidedly worth reading." London Saturday Review.
There was further conversation, and Theron more or less knew that he was bearing a part in it, but his whole mind seemed concentrated, in a sort of delicious terror, upon the wonderful experience to which every footstep brought him nearer.
His hands were in his pockets, and he held an unlighted cigar between his teeth. He looked the Rev. Mr. Ware over calmly, and nodded recognition. Theron had halted instinctively. On the instant he would have given a great deal not to have stopped at all. It was stupid of him to have paused, but it would not do now to go on without words of some sort.
"No, you don't!" interposed the lawyer, with deliberate, sneering emphasis. "I decidedly protest against Winch's voting. He's directly interested, and he mustn't vote. Your chairman knows that perfectly well." "Yes, I think Brother Winch ought not to vote," decided Theron, with great calmness. He saw now what was coming, and underneath his surface composure there were sharp flutterings.
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