ildren. When you
first wrote of the "Polydores" I never once thought of them as
children.'"

"She thought exactly right," I told Silvia, and then continued
reading: "'I supposed them to be something like tadpoles or polliwogs.
I really think I shall enjoy them.'"

"It would serve her right," I said, "to let her come and stay with
them here in our absence. She'd get the cure for enjoyment all right.
Rob wrote of them in the same strain and says he, too, is curious to
meet the missing links."

"Does she know," asked Silvia, "how Rob regards women?"

"No; I've always made some excuse to her for not having them meet. I
didn't want to hear her make disparaging remarks about him, and she
is such a flirt, she'd try to draw him out and he would shut up like a
clam."

"Well, I think," decided Silvia, "that the best way out of it is to
write Rob to postpone his visit and I will write Beth to come direct
to Hope Haven."

"Yes," I agreed, "that will be fine. She shall have charge of dear
little Di and study the evolutions of the Polydores later."

I approved this plan. So we wrote our letters and stealthily, but
joyously, prepared for our getaway, leaving the house like thieves in
the night and bearing the sleeping cherub, Diogenes.

Silvia sighed in relief when we were aboard the train.

"I feel quite chesty," she declared, "at being smart enough to outwit
Ptolemy, the wizard."

"I have the feeling," I observed forebodingly, "that they may be on
the train or underneath it."

The next morning we reached Windy Creek, the station nearest our
destination, and continued our journey by stage.

"People will think you have consoled yourself very speedily for the
death of your first husband," I observed, as we were en route.

"Why, what do you mean, Lucien?"

"You know Diogenes addresses me as stepdaddy. It is the only word he
speaks plainly."

"Oh!" she exclaimed in perturbation, "I never thought of that! Well,
we can explain to everyone, or I'll teach them to leave off the
'step.'"

"Not on your life!" I demurred.

"He had better call you Lucien, then. Emerald calls his father
'Felix.'"

She at once began her tutelage of the bewildered Diogenes. After
several stabs at pronouncing Lucien he managed to evolve "Ocean" to
which he sometimes affixed "step" so that people to whom he was not
explained doubtless thought me the latest thing in dances.

Hope Haven was like most resorts--a place safe to shun. There was a