fingers became shriveled and bloodless. And had not vanity
gone out with the entrance of sin, Margaret would have noticed
that her tight little curls were looser and the once stately
ostrich feather upon her Sunday hat, the envy of little girls
whom the green monster possessed, as flabby as a long sermon.

Meanwhile the tide having turned, little sister boat made fine
way of it down the river, and, burrowing in the fog, holding
her breath as it were, and greatly assisted by the tide,
slipped past the town unseen, and put for open sea, where it is
to be supposed she enjoyed herself hugely and, finally,
becoming a little skeleton of herself on unknown shores, was
gathered up by somebody who wanted a pretty fire with green
lights in it. The main point is that she went her selfish way
undetected, so that the wide-lanterned search which presently
arose for little Margaret tumbled and stumbled about clueless,
and halted to take drinks, and came back about morning and lay
down all day, and said it never did, which it certainly hadn't.
All the to-do was over Margaret, for Aladdin had not been
missed, and, even if he had, nobody would have looked for him.
His father was at home bending over the model of the wonderful
lamp which was to make his fortune, and over which he had been
bending for fifteen rolling years. It had come to him, at about
the time that he fell in love with Aladdin's mother, that a
certain worthless biproduct of something would, if combined
with something else and steeped in water, generate a certain
gas, which, though desperately explosive, would burn with a
flame as white as day. Over the perfection of this invention,
with a brief honeymoon for vacation, he had spent fifteen
years, a small fortune,--till he had nothing left, --the most