It was on the day the Spraggs left Skog Harbour that Undine vowed to herself with set lips:  “I’ll never try anything again till I try New York.”  Now she had gained her point and tried New York, and so far, it seemed, with no better success.  From small things to great, everything went against her.  In such hours of self-searching she was ready enough to acknowledge her own mistakes, but they exasperated her less than the blunders of her parents.  She was sure, for instance, that she was on what Mrs. Heeny called “the right tack” at last:  yet just at the moment when her luck seemed about to turn she was to be thwarted by her father’s stupid obstinacy about the opera-box...

She lay brooding over these things till long after Mrs. Spragg had gone away to dress for dinner, and it was nearly eight o’clock when she heard her father’s dragging tread in the hall.

She kept her eyes fixed on her book while he entered the room and moved about behind her, laying aside his hat and overcoat; then his steps came close and a small parcel dropped on the pages of her book.

“Oh, father!” She sprang up, all alight, the novel on the floor, her fingers twitching for the tickets.  But a substantial packet emerged, like nothing she had ever seen.  She looked at it, hoping, fearing—­she beamed blissful interrogation on her father while his sallow smile continued to tantalize her.  Then she closed on him with a rush, smothering his words against her hair.

“It’s for more than one night—­why, it’s for every other Friday!  Oh, you darling, you darling!” she exulted.

Mr. Spragg, through the glittering meshes, feigned dismay.  “That so?  They must have given me the wrong—!” Then, convicted by her radiant eyes as she swung round on him:  “I knew you only wanted it once for yourself.  Undine; but I thought maybe, off nights, you’d like to send it to your friends.”

Mrs. Spragg, who from her doorway had assisted with moist eyes at this closing pleasantry, came forward as Undine hurried away to dress.

“Abner—­can you really manage it all right?”

He answered her with one of his awkward brief caresses.  “Don’t you fret about that, Leota.  I’m bound to have her go round with these people she knows.  I want her to be with them all she can.”

A pause fell between them, while Mrs. Spragg looked anxiously into his fagged eyes.

“You seen Elmer again?”

“No.  Once was enough,” he returned, with a scowl like Undine’s.

“Why—­you said he couldn’t come after her, Abner!”

“No more he can.  But what if she was to get nervous and lonesome, and want to go after him?”

Mrs. Spragg shuddered away from the suggestion.  “How’d he look?  Just the same?” she whispered.

“No.  Spruced up.  That’s what scared me.”

It scared her too, to the point of blanching her habitually lifeless cheek.  She continued to scrutinize her husband broodingly.  “You look fairly sick, Abner.  You better let me get you some of those stomach drops right off,” she proposed.