without interest," York interfered again.
"Mrs. Bahrr will want a full report of Jerry, with the blank spaces for
remarks filled out," Laura went on. "Why, she has changed her course and
is tacking away with the wind."
"Going over to the Lenwells', I suppose. They are in some way sort of
distantly related to her. Just near enough, anyhow, to listen to all her
stories, and then say: 'For goodness sake don't say I told it; I got it
from Stellar, you know.' She will put into any port right now. I'm her
lighthouse warning," York declared. "She never approaches when I'm
present."
York had risen and was standing in the doorway, where the growing moon
revealed him clearly. Mrs. Bahrr, coming up the walk toward the
Macpherson drive, suddenly turned about and hurried away, her tall,
angular form in relief against the sky-line in the open space that lay
between the Macpherson home and the nearest buildings down the slope
toward the heart of the town.
"Coming back to common things," York continued, dropping into his
favorite chair. "My sister scandalizes me on every occasion. Whether or
not you hitch your wagon to a star, Jerry, is not so important, after
all. The real test is in just what kind of a star you hitch to. That
will tell whether you are going to ride to glory or cut such a figure as
the cow did that jumped over the moon."
"It is not always that lawyers give counsel for nothing, Jerry," Laura
began, but the line of talk was again interrupted.
The coming of callers led to many lines of discussion during the long
summer evening, in which Jerry took little part. In this new hemisphere
in which she was trying to find herself, where east seemed south and her
right hand her left, there was so much of the old hemisphere against
which she had partly burnt her bridges. The friendly familiarity of New
Eden neighbors was very different from the caste exclusiveness of the
Darby-Swaim set in Philadelphia. With the Winnowoc Valley people the
rich landholders had no social traffic. But the broad range of
conversation to-night, token of general information, called up home
memories in Jerry's mind and the long evenings when Jim Swaim's friends
gathered there to discuss world topics with her father, while she
listened with delight to all that was said. Her mother didn't care for
these things and wondered why her artistic daughter could be so
interested in them. But when the Macphersons and their guests spoke of
the latest ma
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