With a half-guilty consciousness, she crept softly upstairs and, pushing the door partly open, looked within.
Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single small window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half illuminating the barren, dreary apartment.

In the ray of this sunbeam she saw the child's glowing hair, as if crowned by a red aureole, as she sat upon the floor with her exaggerated doll between her knees.

She appeared to be talking to it; and it was not long before Mrs.Tretherick observed that she was rehearsing the interview of a half-hour before.

She catechized the doll severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its stay there, and generally on the measure of time.

The imitation of Mrs.
Tretherick's manner was exceedingly successful, and the conversation almost a literal reproduction, with a single exception.