ght. But, as so often happens, it was
destined to be the father of a pestilential pack which were neither
white nor unintentional.

CHAPTER XI

About the Phipps' home hung now the atmosphere of expectancy. It had so
hung for several weeks, ever since the first letter to Cousin Gussie had
been posted, but now there was in it a different quality, a quality
of brightness, of cheer. Martha seemed more like herself, the capable,
adequate self which Galusha had met when he staggered into that house
out of the rain and wind of his first October night on Cape Cod. She was
more talkative, laughed more frequently, and bustled about her work with
much, if not all, of her former energy. She, herself, was quite aware
of the change and commented upon it rather apologetically in one of her
talks with her lodger.

"It's ridiculous," she said, "and I know it, but I can't help it. I'm
as excited as a child and almost as sure everything is goin' to come out
right as--well, as Primmie is. I wasn't so at all in the beginnin'; when
we first sent that letter to your cousin I didn't think there was much
more than one chance in a thousand that he would take any interest in
Wellmouth Development stock. But since you got back from your Boston
cruise, Mr. Bangs, I've felt altogether different. What the Cabot,
Bancroft and Cabot folks said wasn't any too definite; when I sit right
down and think about it I realize it wasn't. But it was encouraging,
real encouraging. And that bit of real encouragement has made me over,
like an old dress. Which reminds me that I've got to be makin' over some
of MY old dresses pretty soon, or summer'll be here and I won't have
a thing fit to wear. I declare," she added, with a laugh, "this is the
first time I've even thought about clothes since last fall. And when a
woman forgets to be interested in dressmakin' she's pretty far gone....
Why, what makes you look so sorrowful? Is anything wrong?"

Galusha replied that nothing whatever was wrong; there was, he said, no
reason in the world why he should appear sorrowful. Yet, this answer
was not the exact truth; there were reasons, and speeches such as Miss
Martha's reminded him of them. They awoke his uneasy conscience to the
fear that the encouragement she found in his report from Cabot, Bancroft
and Cabot was almost entirely due to his interpretation of that report
and not to the facts behind it. However, as she must on no account
guess this to be the case, h