XI.

Clementina listened to the music of the dance, till the last note was
played; and she heard the gay shouts and laughter of the dancers as they
issued from the ball room and began to disperse about the halls and
verandas, and presently to call good night to one another. Then she
lighted her lamp, and put the slippers back into the box and wrapped it
up in the nice paper it had come in, and tied it with the notched ribbon.
She thought how she had meant to put the slippers away so, after the
dance, when she had danced her fill in them, and how differently she was
doing it all now. She wrote the clerk's .name on the parcel, and then she
took the box, and descended to the office with it. There seemed to be
nobody there, but at the noise of her step Fane came round the case of
letter-boxes, and advanced to meet her at the long desk.

"What's wanted, Miss Claxon?" he asked, with his hopeless respectfulness.
"Anything I can do for you?"

She did not answer, but looked him solemnly in the eyes and laid the
parcel down on the open register, and then went out.

He looked at the address on the parcel, and when he untied it, the box
fell open and the shoes fell out of it, as they had with Clementina. He
ran with them behind the letter-box frame, and held them up before
Gregory, who was seated there on the stool he usually occupied, gloomily
nursing his knee.