drove along, chaffing and laughing, until we came to the
dear, old, ugly house. The whole family were waiting on the veranda to
bid me welcome home. Mrs. Talbert took my hands with a look that said
it all. Her face had not grown a shade older, to me, since I first
knew her; and her eyes--the moment you look into them you feel that she
understands. Alice seemed to think that she had become too grown-up to
be kissed, even by the friend of the family; and I thought so, too. But
pretty Peggy was of a different mind. There is something about the way
that girl kisses an old gentleman that almost makes him wish himself
young again.

At supper we had the usual tokens of festivity: broiled chickens and
pop-overs and cool, sliced tomatoes and ice-cream with real strawberries
in it (how good and clean it tasted after Ispahan and Bagdad!) and the
usual family arguing and joking (how natural and wholesome it sounded
after Vienna and Paris!). I thought Maria looked rather strenuous and
severe, as if something important were on her mind, and Billy and Alice,
at moments, had a conscious air. But Charles Edward and Lorraine were
distinctly radiant, and Peggy was demurely jolly. She sounded like her
father played on a mandolin.

After supper Talbert took me to the summer-house at the foot of the
garden to smoke. Our first cigars were about half burned out when he
began to unbosom himself.

"I've been a fool," he said, "an idiot, and, what is more, an unnatural
and neglectful father, cruel to my children when I meant to be kind, a
shirker of my duty, and a bringer of trouble on those that I love best."

"As for example?" I asked.

"Well, it is Peggy!" he broke out. "You know, I like her best of them
all, next to Ada; can't help it. She is nearer to me, somehow. The
finest, most unselfish little girl! But I've been just selfish enough
to let her get into trouble, and be talked about, and have her heart
broken, and now they've put her into a position where she's absolutely
helpless, a pawn in their fool game, and the Lord only knows what's to
come of it all unless he makes me man enough to do my duty."

From this, of course, I had to have the whole story, and I must say
it seemed to me most extraordinary--a flagrant case of idiotic
interference. Peggy had been sent away to one of those curious
institutions that they call a "coeducational college," chiefly because
Maria had said that she ought to understand the duties of modern
woman