chies a few days. Aunt
Marianna hates to make the trip in one day, so we stayed there last
night. But she had to come down to sign some papers. Chris has been down
all the week and he wired for her, so she and I drove down together."

"And is the country lovely now?" Rose asked.

"Well--dry. But it is beautiful, too; so hot and leafy and thunderous."

"And where are you--at the old house?"

"No; at a hotel, up near the Park. I wish you and little Peter Pan could
get away somewhere, Rose, for we'll have another three weeks of the
heat!"

"Oh, my dear, Mother Redding and the baby and I are going to the
Berkshires for at least two whole weeks," Rose announced, happily. "And
I thought that my bad boy was coming in early August," she added, of
the baby, "or I would have gone first. Try to come oftener, Norma," she
pleaded, "for we all love you so!"

And again, Norma's manner worried her. What was there in the sisterly
little speech to bring the tears again to Norma's eyes?

"I know you do, Rosy," Norma said, very low. "I wish I could go up to
the Berkshires with you."

"Well, then, why don't you, dear?"

"Oh"--Norma flung back her head--"I don't know!" she said, with an
attempt at lightness. And two minutes later she had kissed Aunt Kate,
and greeted Wolf, in the kitchen, and Rose heard their laughter, and
then the closing of the front door.

CHAPTER XIX

Wolf walked with her to the omnibus. He had come in tired with the heat
of the long day, but Norma thought him his sweetest self, brotherly,
good, unsuspicious, and unaffected. He complimented her on her
appearance; he had a kind word for Harry Redding, for the baby; he told
Norma that he and his mother had gone to Portland by water a few weeks
before and had a great spree. Norma, tired and excited, loved him for
his very indifference to her affairs and her mood, for the simplicity
with which he showed her the book he was reading, and the amusement he
found all along the dry and dusty and dirty street. Everything was
interesting to Wolf, and he made no apologies for the general wiltedness
and disorder of the neighbourhood.

Norma looked down at him, from the top of the omnibus, and thought that
he was a friendly and likable big young man, with his rumpled bare head
shining reddish-brown in the streaming, merciless sunlight. She had no
idea that his last look at her was like some precious canvas that a
collector adds to his treasures, that to the thous