went softly to the bedside of the child and, bending over
him, gently drew the sweet-pea blossom from his chubby little fist.

XXIII

HAMMERSTEIN

Miss Calthea Rose was up and about very early the next morning. She had
work to do in which there must be no delay or loss of opportunity. It
was plain enough that her scheme for driving away Ida Mayberry had
failed, and, having carefully noted the extraordinary length of time
which Mrs. Cristie and Mr. Lodloe spent together under the stars the
previous evening, she was convinced that it would not be easy to make
that lady dissatisfied with the Squirrel Inn. She therefore determined
to turn aside from her plans of exile, to let the child's nurse stay
where she pleased, to give no further thought to Lanigan Beam, and to
devote all her energies to capturing Mr. Tippengray. She believed that
she had been upon the point of doing this before the arrival of
intruders on the scene, and she did not doubt that she could reach that
point again.

Miss Calthea was very restless that morning; she was much more anxious
to begin work than was anybody else on the place. She walked about the
ground, went into the garden, passed the summer-house on her way there
and back again, and even wandered down to the barnyard, where the
milking had just begun. If any one had been roaming about like herself,
she could not have failed to observe such person. But there was no one
about until a little before breakfast-time, when Mr. Petter showed
himself.

This gentleman greeted Calthea coolly. He had had a very animated
conversation with his wife on the evening before, and had been made
acquainted with the unwarrantable enmity exhibited by this village
shopkeeper toward Mrs. Cristie's blooded assistant. He was beginning to
dislike Calthea, and he remembered that the Rockmores never liked her,
and he wished very much that she would cease to spend so much of her
time at his house. After breakfast Calthea was more fortunate. She saw
the Greek scholar walking upon the lawn, with a piece of writing-paper
in his hand. In less than five minutes, by the merest accident in the
world, Mr. Tippengray was walking across the lawn with Miss Rose, and he
had put his piece of paper into his pocket.

She wanted to ask him something. She would detain him only a few
minutes. The questions she put to him had been suggested to her by
something she had read that morning--a most meager and unsatisfactory
passage.