Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/16

12 to see some of the others before I left New York." The child's lip trembled and her eyes filled. She felt in her pocket and produced a handkerchief with a broad black hem and wiped away the tears; then blew her nose.

"You must excuse me, but sometimes I have to leak a little. Mrs. O'Shea says it is quite ladylike to cry, but one must do it without blowing one's nose. I haven't learned how yet. Of course Mrs. O'Shea has had so much practice. She has lost four husbands, besides a mother and father, two stepmothers and one stepfather and quite a batch of uncles and aunts and cousins and some stepchildren, but I don't believe she had to keep from blowing her nose when they died. She never said so—she's too ladylike to say anything, even about stepchildren, but she used to tell me all the things she wouldn't say about them. I felt kind of sad about the stepchildren because I'm some myself."

"Some of hers?" asked Philip.

"Oh, my, no! None of my fathers would have married Mrs. O'Shea, even if she had sighed herself to death. You see she used to clean up our studio, and darn our stockings, and wash up the tea things, and brush my hair, and do all kinds of odd jobs for us. No, I am