uncles lean on the First National counter when they want to borrow
money. But you'd think they'd have some respect for your father, for
your uncle, for you!"

"Oh, well, it's all over now," replied Phil.

"It's a good thing you're the wise child you are! You understand
perfectly that the Holtons are not for you in this world. And if your
father weren't the gentleman he is he would have made a big row about
those people being asked to your party: it was an insult, too deep for
my powers of description. Those women treat your father as though he
were a halfway idiot--a fool to be thrust around when it pleases them,
and to be the object of simpering tears when they want to play the
pathetic in speaking of your mother to people. They are detestable,
contemptible. And Jack Holton's turning up at Amzi's was the very last
straw."

Phil gazed at Nan with increasing surprise. This was not the familiar
Nan Bartlett of the unfailing gentleness, the whimsical humor. This was
almost a scene, and scenes were not to the liking of either of the
Bartlett sisters.

"Daddy hardly referred to that, Nan. I don't think it really troubled
him."

"That's the worst of it, dear child! Of course he wouldn't show feeling
about it! That's the heartbreaking thing about that father of yours,
that he has borne that old trouble so bravely. It was ghastly that that
man of all men should have stumbled into Amzi's house in that way.
Nothing was ever nobler than the way your father bore it."

She knelt suddenly and clasped Phil in her arms as though to shield her
from all the wrongs of the world. There were tears in Nan's eyes,
unmistakably, when Phil stroked her cheek, and then for the first time
with a sudden impulse Nan kissed her. Phil's intercourse with the
Bartletts had been in the key of happy companionship, marked with a
restraint that the girl respected and admired. There had been an
imperceptible line beyond which she had never carried her pranks with
them. Tears she had never associated with either of the sisters. She
would have assumed, if it had ever been a question in her mind, that
Rose would have been the likelier to yield to emotion.

Nan walked to the window and looked out upon the slowly falling snow.
Phil was busy for a moment readjusting herself to the new intimacy
established by the sight of her friend's agitation. These first tears
that Phil had ever seen in Nan's eyes had a clarifying effect upon her
consciousness and und