e New York
lawyer who represented the trustee for the bondholders and they had made
an inspection of the road together. It had always been Kirkwood's way
when aroused to devote himself tirelessly to his client's business, and
Phil had not failed to note how completely labor transformed him. His
languor and indifference now disappeared; he spoke feelingly of the
generosity of his Williams classmate, who had placed the Sycamore case
in his hands. It was a great opportunity and he assured her that he
meant to make the most of it.

He warned her that she was not to tell any one what he was engaged upon,
and that she must not be surprised into confessions by her aunts. He
began to visit the capital, always returning on the evening train,
though she knew that he might more comfortably have spent the night in
the city. He explained to Phil that he hoped to adjust the Sycamore's
affairs without litigation.

"I'm just enough of an old fogy to cut myself out of a big fee by
smoothing the wrinkles without a lawsuit. It's the professor in me,
Phil; it's the academic taint."

And to this the obvious retort was, of course, that it was because of
his highmindedness that he sought peaceable adjustments where more
drastic measures would have been to his profit.

She, too, was putting forth her best energies, and he was relieved to
find that she disposed of her work so lightly; even her frequent
calamities were a matter for jesting. They made a joke of the washing of
the supper dishes: he insisted on helping her, and would don an apron
and do the rougher part of it. He declared that he had never been so
well fed before, and that her cooking showed real genius. It would be a
dark day when his fee in the traction case would make it possible to
install a new maid-of-all work.

Phil was aware that their talk drifted often and with seeming
inevitableness to the Bartletts. Her successes with the housekeeping
were due to the friendly supervision of the sisters in Buckeye Lane. He
liked to hear her recount the ways in which they were her guide and
inspiration. In doubts she flew to them; but one or the other appeared
almost daily at the cottage. "Rose showed me how to make that sponge
cake," Phil would say; or, if the furniture in their little parlor had
been rearranged, it was very likely Nan who had suggested the change. It
was a considerable distance across town from the Kirkwoods' to Number 98
Buckeye Lane, and as these women were exce