good thick one, for your
grandfather. It worried us last winter that he went so lightly clad
during the snow storms."

Molly's face changed, and her eyes sparkled with pleasure.

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" she exclaimed, losing her manner of distant
politeness. "I've been trying to persuade him to buy one, but he hates
to spend money on himself."

Kesiah, who had leaned back during the conversation, with the scowling
look she wore when her heart was moved, nodded grimly while she felt in
the black travelling bag she carried for Mrs. Gay's salts. She was one
of those unfortunate women of a past generation, who, in offering no
allurement to the masculine eye, appeared to defeat the single end
for which woman was formed. As her very right to existence lay in her
possible power to attract, the denial of that power by nature, or the
frustration of it by circumstances, had deprived her, almost from
the cradle, of her only authoritative reason for being. Her small,
short-sighted eyes, below a false front which revealed rather than
obscured her bare temples, flitted from object to object as though in
the vain pursuit of some outside justification of her indelicacy in
having permitted herself to be born.

"Samson tells me that my son has come, Molly," said Mrs. Gay, in a
flutter of emotion. "Have you had a glimpse of him yet?"

The girl nodded. "He took supper at our house the night he got here."

"It was such a surprise. Was he looking well?"

"Very well, I thought, but it was the first time I had seen him, you
know."

"Ah, I forgot. Are you sure you won't get in, child? Well, drive on,
Samson, and be very careful of that bird cage."

Samson drove on at the command, and Molly, plodding obstinately after
the carriage, was enveloped shortly in the cloud of dust that floated
after the wheels.

CHAPTER VI

TREATS OF THE LADIES' SPHERE

As the carriage rolled up the drive, there was a flutter of servants
between the white columns, and Abednego, the old butler, pushed aside
the pink-turbaned maids and came down to assist his mistress to alight.

"Take the bird cage, Abednego, I've bought a new canary," said Mrs. Gay.
"Here, hold my satchel, Nancy, and give Patsey the wraps and umbrellas."

She spoke in a sweet, helpless voice, and this helplessness was
expressed in every lovely line of her figure. The most casual observer
would have discerned that she had surrendered all rights in order to
grasp more effect