ilous activity, was a
disquieting guest. Remembering that, he took the incident with an
ostentatious lightness, and Nan followed his lead. Presently Charlotte's
kind face relaxed, and when they saw she was continuing her preparations
with a less troubled brow, Raven took Nan upstairs to the great west
room made ready for his sister with a fire roaringly active. There he
installed her, and when she reminded him that the room had been wakened
from its winter drowse to this exhilaration for Amelia, he bade her
"hush up and stay put." Two facts were paramount: she was the first
comer and this was the best room. But, Nan said, she wasn't going to
stay over night. She should get the six o'clock back to Boston. Raven
might here have reflected that, if she had merely the fact of Amelia's
coming to break to him, she could have done it by telephone. Was there
something in the unexpectedness of finding him immersed in the problem
of Tira that had overthrown her preconceived plan? Had she, finding him
absorbed in a new association, lost immediate interest in the drama she
had mischievously meant to share?

"I take it for granted," she said, "you'll let Jerry carry me to the
station."

"No," said Raven, impishly determined, "you're going to stay. You'll
borrow nighties and things from Amelia."

"Seethe the kid in its mother's milk?" inquired Nan, her own impishness
flashing up, irresistible. "Come up here to undermine her and then
borrow her things?"

"Seethe the kid in its own tooth paste," said Raven. "Yes, you're simply
going to stay. It's foreordained. Actually you came up here to help me
out in more ways than one."

"Did I?" she asked, and reflected. She had one of her moments of clever
guesswork over him. Rookie was a simple proposition. She could always,
she had once boasted to him, find him out. And reaching about for the
clue, suddenly she had it and proclaimed it in triumph.

"I've got it. Your farmer's wife! you want me to do something, something
she won't let you do. It's what we said. You want me to take her back
with me."

"Yes," he said. "Just that."

They stood looking at each other gravely in the silence of the gaily
flowered room with the great blaze rushing up the chimney. It might have
seemed that they were measuring each other. Yet they were inadequately
matched, for though Raven knew Nan, it was not especially in her
relation to him, and she knew herself and him intimately, in their
common bond. The