“Oh, if you please, Miss Tacchi, the doctor said she was to be kept so quiet.  Poor Miss Tippit; she is very bad, Miss; I think she’s insensible.”

“You need not tell me what to do.  I know just as well as yourself.”

The sufferer lay perfectly still, and apparently unconscious.  Miriam looked at her for a moment; and felt rebuked, but went and sat by the fire.

“I don’t mind doing anything for her,” she said to herself, “although, she is no particular friend of mine, and not a person whom it is a pleasure to assist; but I really don’t know whether, in justice to myself and Andrew, I ought to remain, seeing how seldom we get a chance of enjoying ourselves, and how important a change is for both of us.”

There is no person whom we can more easily deceive—­no, not even the silliest gull—­than ourselves.  We are always perfectly willing to deny ourselves to any extent, or even to ruin ourselves, but unfortunately it does not seem right we should do so.  It is not selfishness, but a moral obligation which intervenes.

The man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves was left half-dead.  The priest and the Levite, who came and looked and passed by on the other side, assuredly convinced themselves that most likely the swooning wretch was not alive.  They were on most important professional errands. Ought they to run the risk of entirely upsetting those solemn, engagements by incurring the Levitical penalty of contact with a corpse?  There was but a mere chance that they could do any good.  This person was entirely unknown to them; his life might not be worth saving, for he might be a rascal; and, on the other hand, there were sacred duties—­duties to their God.  What priest or Levite, with proper religious instincts, could possibly hesitate?

Was the Miriam who chafed at her disappointment, and invented casuistical arguments to excuse herself, the same Miriam who walked over to see Mortimer, Wake, and Collins on behalf of Mr. Cutts?  Precisely the same.

The doctor kept his engagement, and in an hour returned with a nurse.  When Miriam saw she was relieved, she became compassionate.

“I am so grieved,” she said to the doctor, “to see Miss Tippit so ill.  Is there really nothing I can do for her?”

“Nothing, madam.”

Miriam, so grieved, rushed downstairs wild with excitement and delight, laid hold of Andrew, half asleep, twitched him merrily out of the chair, and they were off.  In a few minutes they were at the hall, and found that they were in ample time to hear Mr. Montgomery’s first song.

He had taken particular care not to include anything offensive or even broad, so that one of his audience who eat below Miriam and Andrew exclaimed in their hearing that it was “a d——­d pious night,” and wondered “what Mont’s little game was.”

One of Mr. Montgomery’s most telling serious songs was sung in the costume of a sailor.  There was a description of his wanderings over the “salt, salt sea,” which rhymed with something “free,” as it always does, and there was a slightly veiled account of his exploits amongst the damsels of different countries, always harmless, so at least ran the version for the night, and yet he swore when he returned that