ou should kick
up a rumpus any time something doesn't go just to suit your royal
highness."

"See here, Lil!" Dicky began to speak wrathfully.

"Shut up till I'm through talking," she admonished him roughly.

If I had not been so angry and humiliated I could have laughed aloud
at the promptness with which Dicky closed his mouth.

"You never gave me or the boys a taste of your rages simply because
you knew we wouldn't stand for them. I'll wager you anything you like
that Mrs. Graham never knew of your temper until after you had married
her. But now that you're safely married you think you can say anything
you like. Men are all like that."

She spoke wearily, contemptuously, as if a sudden disagreeable memory
had come to her. She dropped her hands from his shoulders.

"Of course, I've no right to butt in like this," she said, as if
recalled to herself. "I beg pardon of both of you. Good-by," and she
dashed for the door.

But Dicky, with one of his quick changes from wrath to remorse, was
before her.

"No you don't, my dear," he said, grasping her arm. "You know I
couldn't get angry with you no matter what you said. I owe you too
much. I know I have a beast of a temper, but you know, too, I'm over
it just as quickly. Look here."

He flopped down on his knees in an exaggerated pose of humility, and
put up his hands first to me and then to Lillian.

"See. I beg Madge's pardon. I beg Lillian's pardon, everybody's
pardon. Please don't kick me when I'm down."

Lillian's face relaxed. She laughed indulgently.

"Oh, I'll forgive you, but I imagine it will take more than that
to make your peace with your wife! It would if you were my husband.
'Phone me about Sunday. Perhaps Mrs. Graham can come over after dinner
and meet you there. Good-by."

She hurried out to the door, this time without Dicky's stopping her.
Dicky came toward me.

"If I say I am very, very sorry, Madge?" he said, smiling
apologetically at me.

"Of course it's all right, Dicky," I forced myself to say.

Curiously enough, after all, my resentment was more against Lillian
than against Dicky. Probably she meant well, but how dared she talk
to my husband as if he were her personal property, and what was it he
"owed her" that made him take such a raking over at her hands?

XII

LOST AND FOUND

"Margaret!"

"Jack!"

It was, after all, a simple thing, this meeting with my cousin-brother
that I had so dreaded. Save for the fact that