uppose you keep on seeing him just the same."

"Course I do."

Persis mused. Diantha was wrong, undoubtedly, and yet more sinned
against than sinning. Cautions and expostulations were unavailing with
this spirited young creature, smarting under continued injustice and
seeing with her uncompromising clearness of vision the selfish jealousy
which would keep her out of her birthright indefinitely. "You want to
be real careful, Diantha," said Persis, realizing the futility of her
words. "Thad's a nice boy and you're a nice girl, but it don't look
well for young folks to be meeting on the sly."

She tried but with little success, to exercise a certain supervision
over Diantha that winter. Though the children came down with measles
one after another, and Joel had an attack of rheumatism which kept him
a prisoner in his bed for seven weeks, it seemed to Persis that Diantha
was never really out of her mind. She was surprised on the other hand
to find how little Justin Ware was in her thoughts. Instead of
returning to Clematis in a few weeks as he had intended, he had been
called West unexpectedly. He had not written Persis to apprise her of
his change of plans, and she heard of it only through Mrs. Hornblower.
And the astonishing part was that she heard it with scarcely a pang.
She had discontinued her practise of saying good night to the
photograph in the plush frame with Justin Ware's return, but sometimes
when the house was still, she took her stand before it and studied the
pleasant, immature face intently, as if trying to read from its
ingenuous smile a solution of some inward perplexity.

The measles and the winter ran their course together. The children
ventured out and the daffodils ventured up. Joel hobbled about with a
cane and took Celia in search of violets. The baby who had come very
near dying, decided apparently that since recovery was in order she
might as well make a thorough job of it and began to grow fat and
sweet-tempered and to acquire dimples. And Persis made the pleasing
discovery that in the months during which she had been a woman of
property, she had not spent her income and resolved at once on
rectifying this needless opulence.

"I've done considerable plodding in my time, I wouldn't mind a little
skimming for a change," thought Persis. Next to a family she had long
craved an automobile. The surplus of her income was sufficient for the
purchase of one of the cheaper grades of cars.