Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/189

Rh him if he hadn't been able to get them to accept me: he thinks everything in life of them. If they cast me off now he'll do just the same. He'll have to choose between us, and when it comes to that he'll never choose me."

"He'll never choose Mr. Flack, if that's what you mean—if you are going to identify yourself so with him!"

"Oh, I wish he'd never been born!" Francie suddenly shivered. And then she added that she was sick—she was going to bed, and her sister took her off to her room.

Mr. Dosson, that afternoon, sitting by Francie's bedside, read out from the copy of the Reverberator which he had purchased on the boulevard the dreadful "piece" to his two daughters. It is a remarkable fact that as a family they were rather disappointed in this composition, in which their curiosity found less to repay it than it had expected, their resentment against Mr. Flack less to stimulate it, their imaginative effort to take the point of view of the Proberts less to sustain it, and their acceptance of the promulgation of Francie's innocent remarks as a natural incident of the life of the day less to make them reconsider it. The letter from Paris appeared lively, "chatty," even brilliant, and so far as the personalities contained in it were concerned Mr. Dosson wanted to know if they were not aware over here of the charges brought