revolutions in South America. I've read about them in Richard Harding
Davis. Did ever you read him? Mind you, I'm not saying he's an artist,
but the man has force. He makes you long to go."

"A dirty place," said Mr. Philip.

"What does that matter, where there's life? I feel--I feel"--she wrung
her inky brown hands--"as if I should die if something didn't happen at
once: something big, something that would bang out like the one o'clock
gun up at the Castle. And nothing will. Nothing ever will!"

"Och, well," he comforted her, "you're young yet, you know."

"Young!" cried Ellen, and suddenly wept. If this was youth--!

He bent down and played with the fire-irons. It was odd how he didn't
want to go away, although she was in distress. "Some that's been in
South America don't find it to their taste," he said. "The fellow that's
coming to-night wants to sell some property in Rio de Janeiro because he
doesn't mean to go back."

"Ah, how can he do that?" asked Ellen unsteadily. The tears she was too
proud to wipe away made her look like a fierce baby. "Property in Rio de
Janeiro! It's like being related to someone in 'Treasure Island.'"

"'Treasure Island!' Imph!" He had seen his father draw Ellen often
enough to know how to do it, though he himself would never have paid
enough attention to her mental life to discover it. "You're struck on
that Robert Louis Stevenson, but he wasn't so much. My Aunt Phemie was
with him at Mr. Robert Thompson's school in Heriot Row, and she says he