ithout waiting for her, on the little squat,
old-fashioned sofa, and Nan went about the room with her match and
dotted it with candles. Raven looked after her in her housewifely
progress; he was still concerned, still grave over her leaving his house
for this. She had on her walking suit, whatever frills she might have
discovered upstairs, and she looked ready for outdoor enterprise. What a
hardy child she was, slender and supple, but taut for action in the
homespun service of the day! She threw her match into the fire and came
to him, sat down beside him and, like the Nan of a hundred years ago,
her childhood and his youth, put her head down on his shoulder.

"Nan," said he, abandoning what he sometimes considered the heavy father
attitude and jamming the silky head down into its hollow, "what did you
do it for? Didn't you like my house?"

"Yes, Rookie darling," she said, in a tone of drowsy happiness. "I meant
to stay--truly I did--and cut in when Mrs. Powell tried to get you to
give yourself away so she could tell her alienists how crazy you are.
But if I had, Dick would have stayed, too. He never'd have gone, never
in the world. And he's so quarrelsome."

"How do you know he's gone?" Raven asked.

"Why, of course he has. He would, the minute he thought I had. Hasn't
he?"

"Yes," said Raven, "he has. Nan, why the dickens do you treat him so?
You mean to take him in the end."

"Do I?" asked Nan, still most contentedly. "Rookie, what a lot you know.
Wake me if you hear a step."

"A step? Who's coming?"

"Charlotte. I told her I was no more afraid than up in your west
chamber. Not so much: Dick and his mother can't pounce on me here. I
didn't say that though. Charlotte thinks I just came over for a freak;
but she's coming to stay with me."

"You don't know what Charlotte thinks," said Raven succinctly. "She's
got a pretty accurate idea of all of us. You're not going to stay here.
That's flat. We'll blow out the candles in a minute or two and poke off
home."

"This is home," said Nan and rubbed her cheek on his coat. "Darling
Rookie!"

"You're running away from Milly," said Raven. "That's all right. I wish
I could myself. But what are you going to say when she finds the house
is open and you're here? I found it out and so can she. I was going by
and saw the light."

"She won't go by and see the light," said Nan, from the same far
distance. "Consider those pumps. She won't go out. If she does, you must
ju