Stapleton’s uncle, died yesterday, and the ball is given up.”

            Maurice rose from his seat with a movement of dismay.

            “The stars in their courses fight against us!” he exclaimed. “I’m afraid this will make a great difference to you, won’t it, mother?”

            “It does make a difference,” she assented, writing on uninterruptedly. “You see I was to have rewritten her whole visiting-list, besides doing the invitations to the ball. And Lent comes so early this year.”

            Maurice was silent, and for some twenty minutes Mrs. Birkton’s pen continued to move steadily forward over the ruled sheets of the visiting-book. The short January afternoon was fast darkening into a snowy twilight, and Maurice presently stretched out his hand toward the match-box which lay on the desk.

            “Oh, Maurice, don’t light the gas yet. I can see quite well, and you had better keep the stove going a little longer. It’s so cold.”

            “Why not have both?”

            “You extravagant boy! When it gets really dark I shall take my writing into the kitchen, but meanwhile it is so much pleasanter here; and I don’t believe Annette has lit the kitchen stove yet. I haven’t heard her come in.”

            “Where has she been this afternoon?”

            “At her confirmation class. Father Thurifer holds a class every afternoon this week in the chantry. You know Annette is to be confirmed next Sunday.”

            “Is she? No—I had forgotten.”

            “But she must have come in by this time,” Mrs. Birkton continued, with a glance at the darkening window. “Go and see, dear, will you?”

            Maurice obediently stepped out into the narrow passage-way which led from his bedroom to the kitchen. The kitchen door was shut, and as he opened it he came abruptly upon the figure of a young girl, seated in an attitude of tragic self-abandonment at the deal table in the middle of the room. She had evidently just come in, for her shabby hat and jacket and two or three devotional-looking little volumes lay on a chair at her side. Her arms were flung out across the table, with her face hidden between, so that the bluish glimmer of the gas-jet overhead, vaguely outlining her figure, seemed to concentrate all its light upon the mass of her wheat-colored braids. At the sound of the opening door she sprang up suddenly, turning upon Maurice a small disordered face, with red lids and struggling mouth. She was evidently not more than fifteen years old and her undeveloped figure and little round face, in its setting of pale hair, presented that curious mixture of maturity and childishness often seen in girls of her age who have been carefully watched over at home, yet inevitably exposed to the grim diurnal spectacle of poverty and degradation.

            “Annette!” Maurice said, catching the hand with which she tried to hide her face.

            “Oh, Maurice, don’t—don’t please!” she entreated, “I wasn’t crying—I wasn’t! I was only a little tired; and it was so cold walking home from church.”

            “If you are cold, why haven’t you lit the stove?” he asked, giving her time to regain her composure.

            “I will—I was going to.”

            “Carry your things to your room, and I’ll light it for you.”

            “As he spoke his eye fell on the slim little volumes at her side, and he picked up one, which was emblazoned with a cross, surmounted by the title: “Passion Flowers.”

            “And so you are going to be confirmed very soon, Annette?” he asked, his glance wandering over the wide-margined pages with their reiterated invocations in delicate italics:

            O Jesu Christ! Eternal sweetness of them that love Thee,

            O Jesu, Paradise of delights and very glory of the Angels,

            O Jesu, mirror of everlasting love,

            O King most lovely, and Loving One most dear, impress I pray Thee, O Lord Jesus, all Thy wounds upon my heart!

 

 

            Annette’s face was smoothed into instant serenity. “Next Sunday—just think, Maurice, only three days more to wait! It will be Sexagesima Sunday, you know.”

            “Will it? And are you glad to be confirmed?”

            “Oh, Maurice! I have waited so long—some girls are confirmed at thirteen.”

            “Are they? And why did you have to wait?”

            “Because Father Thurifer thought it best,” she answered, humbly. “You see I am very young for my age, and very stupid in some ways. He was afraid that I might not understand all the holy mysteries.”

            “And do you now?”

            “Oh, yes—as well as a girl can presume to. At least Father Thurifer says so.”

            “That is very nice,” said Maurice. “Now run away and I’ll light the fire. Mother will be coming soon to sit here.”

            He went back to his bedroom, where Mrs. Birkton’s pen, in the thickening obscurity, still travelled unremittingly over the smooth pages.

            “Mother, what’s the matter with Annette? When I went into the kitchen I found her crying.”

            Mrs. Birkton pushed her work aside with a vexed exclamation.

            “Poor child!” she said. “After all, Maurice, she is only a child; one can’t be too hard on her.”

            “Hard on her? But why? What’s the matter?”

            “You see,” continued Mrs. Birkton, who invariably put her apologies before her explanations, “she would never have allowed herself to think of it if we hadn’t been so sure of the Stapleton ball.”

            “To think of what?”

            “Her white dress, Maurice, her confirmation dress. At the Church of the Precious Blood all the girls are confirmed in white muslin dresses, with tulle veils and moire sashes. Father Thurifer makes a point of it.”

            “And you promised Annette such a dress?”

            “I thought I might, dear, when Mrs. Stapleton decided to give her ball. You see there is a very large class of candidates for confirmation, and I knew it would be very trying for Annette to be the only one not dressed in white—and at such a solemn time, too. But now, of course, she will have to give it up.”

            “Yes,” said Maurice, absently.