nt, seeing Zack on his way
from the house, and somehow feeling that she could not stay just then.
Her aversion for this was increasing. She did not know how firmly, how
stubbornly, Brent had begun to shut down on his own indulgences.

"Any time you say," he agreeably answered. "Is it town?"

"No, the convent chapel."

"But--er--you'll forgive my wretched memory if I can't seem to recall
when these things take up?"

"Five o'clock, over there," she smiled.

"Five! I never heard of such an hour for church, did you, Colonel?"

"Most certainly, sir!" His affirmation suggested a long personal
acquaintance with such matters. "They always begin at five!"

Jane gave him a quick, twinkling glance, but only added:

"I thought the vesper service might be cooler, and a pleasanter drive.
We ought to start a little after four, don't you think so? And we'll
take Bip, and Dale."

"I wouldn't stop there," Brent moodily suggested.

"I think that will be enough for one day," she laughed. "They're the
principal ones whom--not who ought to go, you understand, but whom I
want to go."

"But Bip is too young," he protested.

"'Suffer the little children--'" she said prettily.

"He'll go to sleep!"

"Then you may hold him."

"Maybe he'll snore!"

"Then you have my permission to choke him," she laughed.

Yet, he was very much in a pout, and staring gloomily at the ground.

"You'll be awfully crowded," he said at last, "with Dale in the buggy,
too!"

"We'll take the surrey."

"And he'll be bored stiff!"

"Not from hearing complimentary things said to me," she gently rebuked
him.

"Oh, Jane, be a sport and let's go alone! I'm worth saving, ain't I,
Colonel?"

"You can't prove it by me, you rogue," the old gentleman asserted.

"I may think about it," she compromised, smiling over her shoulder as
she turned away.

They drew up to the table and arranged the chess board. Zack stood
waiting for the goblets, having no intention to leave these treacherous
exhibits again at large should a spirit of fatigue overtake the players.
So there was a prolonged pause while the men fortified themselves for
the coming fray, and when the Colonel noisily sucked the very last drop
through the cooling ice--and took a piece of this in his mouth to
crunch--he leaned back with a sigh of satisfaction. Zack, as he walked
slowly away, also sighed, but it held a curious mixture of perplexity
and anticipation: perplexity, because Brent had scarc