Big Poker Site hazard of new fortunes 50

gas-jet with a sudden flash that made them both jump a little. The gas inside rendered it more difficult to tell who was on the threshold, but Mrs. Leighton decided from a timorous peep through the scrims that it was a lady and gentleman. Something in this distribution of sex emboldened her; she took her life in her hand, and opened the door. The lady spoke. "Does Mrs. Leighton live heah?" she said, in a rich, throaty voice; and she feigned a reference to the agents permit she held in her hand. "Yes," said Mrs. Leighton; she mechanically occupied the doorway, while Alma already quivered behind her with impatience of her impoliteness. "Oh," said the lady, who began to appear more and more a young lady, "Ah didnt know but Ah had mistaken the hoase. Ah suppose its rather late to see the apawtments, and Ah most ask you to pawdon us." She put this tentatively, with a delicately growing recognition of Mrs. Leighton as the lady of the house, and a humorous intelligence of the situation in the glance she threw Alma over her mothers shoulder. "Ahm afraid we most have frightened you." "Oh, not at all," said Alma; and at the same time her mother said, "Will you walk in, please?" The gentleman promptly removed his hat and made the Leightons an inclusive bow. "You awe very kind, madam, and I am sorry for the trouble we awe giving you." He was tall and severe-looking, with a gray, trooperish mustache and iron-gray hair, and, as Alma decided, iron-gray eyes. His daughter was short, plump, and fresh-colored, with an effect of liveliness that did not all express itself in her broad-vowelled, rather formal speech, with its odd valuations of some of the auxiliary verbs, and its total elision of the canine letter. "We awe from the Soath," she said, "and we arrived this mawning, but we got this cyahd from the brokah just befo dinnah, and so we awe rathah late." "Not at all; its only nine oclock," said Mrs. Leighton. She looked up from the card the young lady had given her, and explained, "We havent got in our servants yet, and we had to answer the bell ourselves, and--" "You were frightened, of coase," said the young lady, caressingly. The gentleman said they ought not to have come so late, and he offered some formal apologies. "We should have been just as much scared any time after five oclock," Alma said to the sympathetic intelligence in the girls face. She laughed out. "Of coase! Ah would have my hawt in my moath all day long, too, if Ah was living in a big hoase alone." A moment of stiffness followed; Mrs. Leighton would have liked to withdraw from the intimacy of the situation, but she did not know how. It was very well for these people to assume to be what they pretended; but, she reflected too late, she had no proof of it except the agents permit. They were all standing in the hall together, and she prolonged the awkward pause while she examined the permit. "You are Mr. Woodburn?" she asked, in a way that Alma felt implied he might not be. "Yes, madam; from Charlottesboag, Virginia," he answered, with the slight umbrage a man shows when the strange cashier turns his check over and questions him before cashing it. Alma writhed internally, but outwardly remained subordinate; she examined the other girls dress, and decided in a superficial consciousness that she had made her own bonnet. "I shall be glad to show you my rooms," said Mrs. Leighton, with an irrelevant sigh. "You must excuse their being not just as I should wish them. Were hardly settled yet." "Dont speak of it, madam," said the gentleman, "if you can overlook the trouble we awe giving you at such an unseasonable houah." "Ahm a hoasekeepah mahself," Miss Woodburn joined in, "and Ah know ho to accyoant fo everything." Mrs. Leighton led the way up-stairs, and the young lady decided upon the large front room and small side room on the third story. She said she could take the small one, and the other was so large that her father could both sleep and work in it. She seemed not ashamed to ask if Mrs. Leightons price was inflexible, but gave way laughing when her father refused to have any bargaining, with a haughty self-respect which he softened to deference for Mrs. Leighton. His impulsiveness opened the way for some confidence from her, and before the affair was arranged she was enjoying in her quality of

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