printed. But she never made the trial, for the reason that such
newspaper literature as found its way into Briar Farm filled her
with amazement, repulsion and disgust. There was nothing in any
modern magazine that at all resembled the delicate, pointed and
picturesque phraseology of the Sieur Amadis! Strange, coarse
slang-words were used,--and the news of the day was slung together
in loose ungrammatical sentences and chopped-up paragraphs of
clumsy construction, lacking all pith and eloquence. So, repelled
by the horror of twentieth-century "style," she had hidden her
manuscripts deeper than ever in the old bureau, under little silk
sachets of dried rose-leaves and lavender, as though they were
love-letters or old lace. And when sometimes she shut herself up
and read them over she felt like one of Hamlet's "guilty creatures
sitting at a play." Her literary attempts seemed to reproach her
for their inadequacy, and when she made some fresh addition to her
store of written thoughts, her crimes seemed to herself doubled
and weighted. She would often sit musing, with a little frown
puckering her brow, wondering why she should be moved to write at
all, yet wholly unable to resist the impulse.

To-night, however, she scarcely remembered these outbreaks of her
dreaming fancy,--the sordid, hard, matter-of-fact side of life
alone presented itself to her depressed imagination. She pictured
herself going into service--as what? Kitchen-maid, probably,--she
was not tall enough for a house-parlourmaid. House-parlourmaids
were bound to be effective,--even dignified,--in height and
appearance. She had seen one of these superior beings in church on
Sundays--a slim, stately young woman with waved hair and a hat as
fashionable as that worn by her mistress, the Squire's lady. With
a deepening sense of humiliation, Innocent felt that her very