e.
To think of this girl starting out again, travelling alone, selling
books from door to door!

"I think you will be quite warranted in being very good to Mr.
King--while his hours drag as he describes," Ellen assented cordially.

"As soon as I can sit up at any sort of decent angle I can do a lot of
work on paper," King asserted. "Then I'll make the time fly.
Meanwhile--it's all right."

They talked together for a little, then King sent for Franz, who came
and played superbly, his eager eyes oftenest on Jordan King, like those
of an adoring and highly intelligent dog. Anne watched Franz, and King
watched Anne. Mrs. Burns, seeming to watch nobody, noted with
affectionate and somewhat concerned interest the apparent trend of the
whole situation. She could not help thinking, rather dubiously, of Mrs.
Alexander King, Jordan's mother.

And, as things happen, it was just as Franz laid down his bow, after a
brilliant rendering of a great concerto, that Mrs. Alexander King came
in. She entered noiselessly, a slender, tall, black-veiled figure, as
scrupulously attired in her conventional deep mourning as if it were not
hot June weather, when some lightening of her sombre garb would have
seemed not only rational but kind to those who must observe her.

"Oh, mother!" King exclaimed. "In all this heat? I didn't expect you.
I'm afraid you ought not to have come."

She bent over him. "The heat has nothing to do with my feelings toward
my son. I couldn't neglect you, dear."

She greeted Ellen cordially, who presented Miss Linton. King lost
nothing of his mother's polite scrutiny of the girl, who bore it without
the slightest sign of recognizing it beyond the lowering of her lashes
after the first long look of the tall lady had continued a trifle beyond
the usual limit. Book agent though she might be, Miss Linton's manner
was faultless, a fact King noted with curious pride in his new
friend--whom, though he himself was meeting her for but the second time,
he somehow wanted to stand any social test which might be put upon her.
And he well knew that his lady mother could apply such tests if anybody
could.

In his heart he was saying that it seemed hard luck, he must say
good-bye to Anne Linton in that mother's presence. There was small
chance to make it a leave-taking of even ordinary good fellowship
beneath that dignified, quietly appraising eye, to say nothing of
endowing it with a quality which should in some measure compe