at it an instant and
then turned sulkily away. "Young cub!" Raven thought. He should have
kissed it, even gone on his knees to do it, and placated her with a
laughing extravagance. He recalled the words he had caught from her lips
when he was coming in and flushed to his forehead over the ringing
warmth of them. He bent to the fine hand about relaxing to withdrawal,
after Dick's flouting, drew it to his own lips and kissed it: not as he
would have had Dick do it but yet with all his heart. As he lifted his
head he smiled into her eyes, and their look smote him. It was as if he
had somehow hurt her.

"O Rookie!" she said, under her breath.

And at the instant, while they stood awkwardly in the rebound from
emotions not recognized, Amelia came out from her bedroom, perfected as
to hair and raiment, but obviously on edge and cheerfully determined on
not showing it. Evidently she liked Old Crow's room no more than she
might have guessed.

"O Lord!" said Raven ruefully to his inner self, "we're going to have a
cheerful house-party, now ain't we?"

XVII

The afternoon went off moderately well. Nan forgot the late
unpleasantness between her and Dick and assumed they were on their usual
terms, a fashion of making up more exasperating to him than the quarrel
itself. He was too often, he suspected, out of the picture of her
immediate mind. But it was most unproductive to sulk. When she forgot
and he reproached her for it, she forgot that also; and now when she
suggested a walk he got his cap with a degree of cheerfulness and they
went out, leaving Raven and his sister together by the fire, for what
proved to be one of the rich afternoons of Raven's life. Amelia sat down
at the hearth and put her perfectly shod feet to the blaze.

"Now, John," she said crisply, while he was fidgeting about, wondering
whether he dared offer her a book and take himself out of doors, "sit
down and tell me all about it."

Raven went to the fire, but stood commanding it and her. He might, he
thought, as well meet the issue at once.

"What?" he asked. "What do you want to know?"

"You mustn't think I can't sympathize," she informed him, in the clear
tone he recognized as the appropriate one for an advanced woman who sees
a task before her--"damned meddlers," he was accustomed to call them in
his sessions of silent thought--"you mustn't think I'm not prepared.
I've heard lectures on it, and since Dick sent me your letter I've read
mo