Sunderline was silent.

“I’ve a chance,” said Marion, “if I will take it.  A chance to do something that I like, something that I think I could do.  I can’t stand the shops; there’s a plenty of girls that are crazy for the places; let them have ’em.  And I can’t stay at home and iron lace curtains for other folks, or go round to rip up and make over other folks’ old dirty carpets.  I don’t mean mother shall do it much longer.  This is what I can do:  I can get on to the lecture list, for reading and reciting.  The Leverings,—­you remember Virginia Levering, who gave a reading here last winter; her father was with her,—­Hamilton Levering, the elocutionist?  Well, I know them very well; I’ve got acquainted with them since; they say they’ll help me, and put me forward.  Mr. Levering will give me lessons and get me some evenings.  He thinks I would do well.  And next year they mean to go out West, and want me to go with them.  Would you?”

Marion looked eagerly and anxiously in Sunderline’s face as she asked the question.  He could not help seeing that she cared what he might think.  And on his part, he could not help caring a good deal what she might do.  He did not like to see this girl, whom he had known and been friends with from childhood, spoilt.  There was good, honest stuff in her, in spite of her second-rate vanities and half-bred ambitions.  If she would only grow out of these, what a womanly woman she might be!  That fair, grand-featured face of hers, what might it not come to hold and be beautiful with, if it could once let go its little airs and consciousnesses that cramped it?  It had a finer look in it now than she thought of, as she waited with real ingenuous solicitude, his answer.

He gave it gravely and conscientiously.

“I don’t think I have any business to advise.  But I don’t exactly believe in that sort of thing.  It isn’t a genuine trade.”

“Why not?  People like it.  Virginia Levering makes fifty dollars a night, even when they have to hire a hall.”

“And how often do the nights come?  And how long is it likely to last?”

“Long enough to make money, I guess,” said Marion, laughing.  She was a little reassured at Sunderline’s toleration of the idea, even so far as to make calm and definite objection.  “And it’s pleasant at the time.  I like going about.  I like to please people.  I like to be somebody.  It may be silly, but that’s the truth.”

“And what would you be afterward, when you had had your day?  For none of these days last long, especially with women.”

“O!” exclaimed Marion, with remonstrative astonishment.  “Mrs. Kemble!  Charlotte Cushman!”

“It won’t do to quote them, I’m afraid.  I suppose you’d hardly expect to come up into that row?” said Sunderline, smiling.

“They began, some time,” returned Marion.

“Yes; but for one thing, it wasn’t a time when everybody else was beginning.  Shall I tell you plainly how it seems to me?”