sic box and a lot of
new records. The old dining-room has a wonderful floor."

"I hate your wonderful floor and your horrid old house. And when I think
of Fifth Avenue and the lights and the theaters and you away from it
all----"

"Poor young doctors have no right to the lights and all the rest of it.
Eve, don't let's quarrel at the last moment. You'll be reconciled to it
all some day."

"I shall never be reconciled."

And now Philip Meade was claiming her. "You promised me this, Eve."

"I shall have all the rest of the winter for you, Pip."

"As if that made any difference! I never put off till to-morrow the
things I want to do to-day. And as for Richard, he'll come running back
to us before the winter is over."

Richard shrugged. "You're a pair of cheerful prophets. Go and fox-trot
with him, Eve."

Left alone, the eyes of the young doctor went at once to the top of the
stairs.

"Come down and dance," he said.

"Do you mean me?" Peggy demanded out of the dimness.

"I mean both of you."

"I can't dance--not the new dances." Anne was conscious of an
overwhelming shyness. "Take Peggy."

"How did you know we were up here?" Peggy asked.

"Well, I heard a little laugh, and a little whisper, and I looked up and
saw a little girl."

"Oh, oh, did you really?"

"Really."

"Well, I can't dance. But I can try."

So they tried, with Richard lifting the child lightly to the lilting
tune.

When he brought her back, he sat down beside Anne. Shyness still chained
her, but he chatted easily. Anne could not have told why she was shy. In
the stable she had felt at her ease with him. But then she had not seen
Eve or Winifred. It was the women who had seemed to make the difference.

Presently, however, he had her telling of her school. "It begins again
to-morrow."

"Do you like it?"

"Teaching? No. But I love the children."

"Do you teach Peggy?"

"Yes. She is too young, really, but she insists upon going."

"There used to be a schoolhouse across the road from my grandfather's. A
red brick school with a bell on top."

"There is still a bell. I always ring it myself, although the boys beg to
do it. But I like to think of myself as the bell ringer."

It was while they sat there that Eric Brand came in through the
kitchen-way to the hall. He stood for a moment looking into the lighted
front room where Eve still danced with Philip Meade, and where the young
man with the eye-glasses talked with the Dutton-Am