about."

"It's nothing," she laughed. "Only a funny old lady--and she's gone now.
I'm going, too--at least, I'm going indoors to read. It's cooler in the
house, but the heat's really not bad anywhere, since nightfall. Summer's
dying. How quickly it goes, once it begins to die."

When she had gone into the house, Fanny stopped rocking, and, leaning
forward, drew her black gauze wrap about her shoulders and shivered.
"Isn't it queer," she said drearily, "how your mother can use such
words?"

"What words are you talking about?" George asked.

"Words like 'die' and 'dying.' I don't see how she can bear to use them
so soon after your poor father--" She shivered again.

"It's almost a year," George said absently, and he added: "It seems to
me you're using them yourself."

"I? Never!"

"Yes, you did."

"When?"

"Just this minute."

"Oh!" said Fanny. "You mean when I repeated what she said? That's hardly
the same thing, George."

He was not enough interested to argue the point. "I don't think you'll
convince anybody that mother's unfeeling," he said indifferently.

"I'm not trying to convince anybody. I mean merely that in my
opinion--well, perhaps it may be just as wise for me to keep my opinions
to myself."

She paused expectantly, but her possible anticipation that George would
urge her to discard wisdom and reveal her opinion was not fulfilled. His
back was toward her, and he occupied himself with opinions of his own
about other matters. Fanny may have felt some disappointment as she rose
to withdraw.

However, at the last moment she halted with her hand upon the latch of
the screen door.

"There's one thing I hope," she said. "I hope at least she won't leave
off her full mourning on the very anniversary of Wilbur's death!"

The light door clanged behind her, and the sound annoyed her nephew. He
had no idea why she thus used inoffensive wood and wire to dramatize her
departure from the veranda, the impression remaining with him being that
she was critical of his mother upon some point of funeral millinery.
Throughout the desultory conversation he had been profoundly concerned
with his own disturbing affairs, and now was preoccupied with a dialogue
taking place (in his mind) between himself and Miss Lucy Morgan. As he
beheld the vision, Lucy had just thrown herself at his feet. "George,
you must forgive me!" she cried. "Papa was utterly wrong! I have told
him so, and the truth is that I have come to rat