CHAPTER VI.
TREATS OF THE LADIES' SPHERE As the carriage rolled up the drive, there was a flutter of servants between the white columns, and Abednego, the old butler, pushed aside the pink-turbaned maids and came down to assist his mistress to alight.
"Take the bird cage, Abednego, I've bought a new canary," said Mrs.Gay.
"Here, hold my satchel, Nancy, and give Patsey the wraps and umbrellas." She spoke in a sweet, helpless voice, and this helplessness was expressed in every lovely line of her figure.

The most casual observer would have discerned that she had surrendered all rights in order to grasp more effectively at all the privileges.

She was clinging and small and delicate and her eyes, her features, her plaintive gestures, united in an irresistible appeal to emotions.
"Where is Jonathan ?" she asked, "I hoped he would welcome me." "So I do, dearest mother--so I do," replied the young man, running hurriedly down the steps and then slipping his arm about her.

"You came a minute or two earlier than I expected you, or I should have met you in the drive." Half supporting, half carrying her, he led the way into the house and placed her on a sofa in the long drawing-room.
"I am afraid the journey has been too much for you," he said tenderly.
"Shall I tell Abednego to bring you a glass of wine." "Kesiah will mix me an egg and a spoonful of sherry, dear, she knows just how much is good for me." Kesiah, still grasping her small black bag, went into the dining-room and returned, bearing a beaten egg, which she handed to her sister.
In her walk there was the rigid austerity of a saint who has adopted saintliness not from inclination, but from the force of a necessity against which rebellion has been in vain.

Her plain, prominent features wore, from habit, a look of sullen martyrdom that belied her natural kindness of heart; and even her false brown front was arranged in little hard, flat curls, as though an artificial ugliness were less reprehensible in her sight than an artificial beauty.
In the midst of the long room flooded with sunshine, the little lady reclined on her couch and sipped gently from the glass Kesiah had handed her.