YOURS WITH ALL MY HEART 



mamma Wakeman couldn't help calling her 

 a jewel too. 



But sometimes, when the young mistress 

 was out, and Skippum and I were playing 

 around the long, low windows that came 

 way down to the veranda floor, we saw 

 poor Inez standing before the pier-glass, 

 trailing the ivory satins and fleecy lace 

 dresses, which her mistress had left all shut 

 in the closet, around her own tall, slender 

 figure, and trying the gleaming necklaces on 

 her own fair neck, and fastening the bril- 

 liants in her blue-black hair. 



And her cheeks burned like rubies, she 

 felt so proud and guilty, too, when she saw 

 how beautiful she looked. She was ' play- 

 ing round the hook," as the little boys call it. 



She didn't start to do wrong, she said, 

 when it was too late, but the more she gave 

 way to the first wrong step of trying on and 

 wishing for the jewels the mis-tress had 

 trusted to her care, the more a dark, secret 

 thought haunted her. She could have put 

 the bad thought away, when it was just a 

 little black thing that bobbed up in her 

 head, the first time; she could have said to it, 

 "Get away: never speak such a word to me 



95 



