"No, it is not that."

"It can't be that he has given up the one he expected to tell us and can
think of no other?"

"Oh, no; he is going to tell that one."

"And you don't like his choice?"

"He won't tell me what it is!" Mrs. Davenport put down her embroidery.
"Then, Ethel," she laid with severity, "the fault is yours. When I had
been five years married, Mr. Davenport confided everything to me."

"So does Richard. Except when I particularly ask him."

"There it is, Ethel. You let him see that you want to know."

"But I do want to know. Richard has had such interesting experiences,
so many of them. And I do so want him to tell a thoroughly nice one.
There's the one when he saved a man from drowning just below our house,
the second summer, and the man turned out to be a burglar and broke into
the pantry that very night, and Richard caught him in the dark with
just as much courage as he had caught him in the water and just as few
clothes, only it was so different. Richard makes it quite thrilling. And
I mentioned another to him. But he just went on shaving. And now he
has gone out walking, and I believe it's going to be something I would
rather not hear. But I mean to hear it."

At lunch Mrs. Field made a better meal, although it was clear to Mrs.
Davenport that Richard on returning from his walk had still kept his
intentions from Ethel. "She does not manage him in the least," Mrs.
Davenport declared to the other ladies, as Ethel and Richard started for
an afternoon drive together. "She will not know anything more when she
brings him back."

But in this Mrs. Davenport did wrong to Ethel's resources. The young
wife did know something more when she brought her husband back from
their drive through the pleasant country. They returned looking like an
engaged couple, rather than parents whose nursery was already a song of
three little voices.

"He has told her," thought Mrs. Davenport at the first sight of them, as
they entered the drawing-room for an afternoon tea. "She does understand
some things."

And when after dinner the ladies had withdrawn to the library, and
waited for the men to finish their cigars, Mrs. Davenport spoke to
Ethel. "My dear, I congratulate you. I saw it at once."

"But he hasn't. Richard hasn't told me anything."

"Ethel! Then what is the matter?"

"I told him something. I told him that if it was going to be any story
about--about something I shouldn't like, I should simply follow it