very sweet; and there was
something that was hurried and breathless. This was new to Bibbs; it was
a perceptible change since he had last seen her, and he bent upon her
a steady, whimsical scrutiny as they stood at the curb, waiting for an
automobile across the street to disengage itself from the traffic.

"That's the new car," she said. "Everything's new. We've got four now,
besides Jim's. Roscoe's got two."

"Edith, you look--" he began, and paused.

"Oh, WE're all well," she said, briskly; and then, as if something in
his tone had caught her as significant, "Well, HOW do I look, Bibbs?"

"You look--" He paused again, taking in the full length of her--her trim
brown shoes, her scant, tapering, rough skirt, and her coat of brown
and green, her long green tippet and her mad little rough hat in the mad
mode--all suited to the October day.

"How do I look?" she insisted.

"You look," he answered, as his examination ended upon an incrusted
watch of platinum and enamel at her wrist, "you look--expensive!" That
was a substitute for what he intended to say, for her constraint and
preoccupation, manifested particularly in her keeping her direct
glance away from him, did not seem to grant the privilege of impulsive
intimacies.

"I expect I am!" she laughed, and sidelong caught the direction of his
glance. "Of course I oughtn't to wear it in the daytime--it's an evening
thing, for the theater--but my day wrist-watch is out of gear. Bobby
Lamhorn broke it yesterday; he's a regular rowdy sometimes. Do you want
Claus to help you in?"

"Oh no," said Bibbs. "I'm alive." And after a fit of panting subsequent
to his climbing into the car unaided, he added, "Of course, I have to
TELL people!"

"We only got your telegram this morning," she said, as they began to
move rapidly through the "wholesale district" neighboring the station.
"Mother said she'd hardly expected you this month."

"They seemed to be through with me up there in the country," he
explained, gently. "At least they said they were, and they wouldn't keep
me any longer, because so many really sick people wanted to get in. They
told me to go home--and I didn't have any place else to go. It'll be all
right, Edith; I'll sit in the woodshed until after dark every day."

"Pshaw!" She laughed nervously. "Of course we're all of us glad to have
you back."

"Yes?" he said. "Father?"

"Of course! Didn't he write and tell you to come home?" She did not turn
to him wit