"I must look at the register," Mrs. Randall continued; "I really
must."

Obeying an uncontrollable impulse Linda half cried, "I'd like to see
you riding on a leopard!" A flood of misery enveloped her, and she
hurried up to the silence of her mother's deserted room.




V


It was on her fourteenth birthday that Linda noticed a decided
change in her mother; a change, unfortunately, that most of all
affected the celebrated good humors. In the first place Mrs. Condon
spent an increasingly large part of the day before the mirror of her
dressing-table, but without any proportionate pleasure; or, if there
was a proportion kept, it exhibited the negative result of a growing
annoyance. "God knows why they all show at once," she exclaimed
discontentedly, seated--as customary--before the eminently truthful
reflection of a newly discovered set of lines. "I'm not old enough
to begin to look like a hag."

"Oh, mother," Linda protested, shocked, "you mustn't say such horrid
things about yourself. Why, you're perfectly lovely, and you don't
seem a speck older than you did years ago."

The other, biting her full underlip at the unwelcome fact in turn
biting a full lower lip back at her, made no reply. Linda lingered