o!"

"I--I _am_ perturbed," said Mattie Tiffany. Running rose-bushes, just
leafing out into their fall greenery, overgrew the pillars beside her.
These she fell to pruning with her hands, so that she turned away her
face.

"I see that discipline is relaxing in this family," said Judge
Tiffany. "Dear, dear, after managing a wife bravely and well for a
quarter century, to fail in one's age! Mattie, he works in my office,
this blush-compelling caller; and I told you when I gave him the
position not to take him up socially for the present!"

"But what was I to do when he telephoned to Eleanor and asked her?"
Mrs. Tiffany turned her head with a turn of her thought. "Did you hear
him telephone--was that how you knew?"

"I'd lose all hold on discipline if I revealed my methods."

Judge Tiffany settled himself in an armchair as one prepared to make
it a long session. "Let's begin at the start. How came he to renew his
acquaintance with Eleanor, and when, and where--and how much had
Mattie Tiffany to do with bringing them together again?"

"Not a thing--truly Edward! Some of Eleanor's slumming with Kate
Waddington and the Masters--they met by accident at a restaurant--Eleanor
asked him. You remember he was taken with her that afternoon just
before she went to Europe--the time he mortified me so dreadfully."

"And the time he attracted my attention," said Judge Tiffany. "And now
behold that youth, who will always get what he wants by frontal
attack, reading my California cases and wearing out my desk with his
feet."

"Do you think he will make a good lawyer?" asked Mattie Tiffany. She
turned full around at this, and the glance she threw into her
husband's face showed more than a casual matchmaker's interest.

"He'll make a good something," said the Judge. "So far as anyone can
judge the race from the start. But that isn't why I have him in the
office. You know how little I care in these days for such practice as
I have left. I tell myself, of course, that it is my lingering
interest in life as a general proposition which made me do it--I am
curious to see before I die how this find of yours is coming out. That
is what I tell myself. Probably in my very inside heart I know that
it's something else."

"What else?" asked Mattie.

"This is one of the hidden things which this experiment is to
discover," said Judge Tiffany. "What made me notice him in the first
place? What made you invite him to tea on the lawn? What has