ight before. Even if he did not care for
himself, there was always Phil to consider. And Phil was very much to
consider. She had decided for herself that the high school had given her
all the education she needed. Kirkwood had weighed the matter carefully
and decided that she would not profit greatly by a college course--a
decision which Phil had stoutly supported. Her aunts favored a year at a
finishing school to tone down her rough edges, but having laid their
plan before their brother Amzi that gentleman had sniffed at it. What
was the use of spoiling Phil? he demanded. "Thunder!" And there was no
reason in the world why Phil should be spoiled.

Phil was not, in any view of the case, an ignorant person. She knew a
great many things that were not embraced in the high-school curriculum.
Her father harbored an old-fashioned love of the poets; which is not
merely to say that at some time in his life he had run through them, but
that he read poetry as one ordinarily reads novels, quite naturally and
without shame. Something of his own love of poetry had passed to his
daughter. He had so trained her that literature meant to Phil not
printed pages, but veritable nature and life. Books were a matter of
course, to be taken up and put down as the reader pleased, and nothing
to grow priggish about. She had caught from him an old habit, formed in
his undergraduate days, of a light, whimsical use of historical and
literary allusions. She entered zestfully into the spirit of this kind
of fooling; and, to his surprise, she had developed an astonishing knack
of imitation and parody. Sometimes Kirkwood without preluding, would
utter a line for Phil to cap; they even composed sonnets in this
antiphonal fashion and pronounced them superior to the average magazine
product. Phil had not only learned much from her father, but she had
absorbed a great deal of lore at the Bartletts', where everything
bookish was vitalized and humanized.

Kirkwood, hearing the creak of the swinging door between the pantry and
dining-room,--a familiar breakfast signal,--chose with care a volume of
Bagehot and carried it to the table which had been set, he imagined, by
the "girl" selected by his sisters-in-law to carry on his establishment
during the winter.

He helped himself to grapes, and was eating with his eye on a page of
Bagehot when the door swung again and Phil piped a cheerful
good-morning. She was an aproned young Phil and her face was flushed
fr