Page:The Semi-detached House.djvu/218

 people or starving children, and yet they are so grateful for that little. Miss Monteneros, don't you think that if you cared about others, they would care about you?"

Rachel did not answer, but she leant over the work frame, and Janet felt a hot tear drop on her hand. But they said no more, for Captain Hopkinson came in in a great hurry apologizing for his delay—making Charlie over to his aunts, stumbling over the eternal table-cover, and begging the girls to keep their embroidered gowns out of the way of his feet.

"You see papa has not an idea it is a table-cover for him," whispered the deluded Rose.

The Baron and the sailor were a fine contrast as they stood talking together; the one, sallow, with a broad wrinkled brow, and a keen calculating eye, and having apparently speculated most of his hair off his head, his shoulders bent, his chest contracted, his manner deferential, his voice unnaturally bland, he looked yellow, as if he had never breathed