ary when you and I are always in the dining-room or upstairs with
Mother, now she's sick?"

Judge Emery had thought of the grade of society which keeps its "best
room" darkened and closed, of the struggles with which his wife had
dragged the family up out of that grade, and was appalled at Lydia's
unconscious reversion to type. "Your mother would feel dreadfully to
have you do that; you know she thinks it very bad form--very green."

Lydia had not insisted; it ran counter to every instinct in Lydia to
insist on anything. She had succumbed at the first of his shocked tones
of surprise; but the suggestion had shown him a glimpse of workings in
her mind which made him uneasy.

However, to-night there were several cheering circumstances. The doctor
had left word that, in all probability, Mrs. Emery would be quite
herself in ten days--a shorter time than he had feared. Lydia was really
charming in a rose-colored dress that matched the dewy flush in her
cheeks; the roast looked cooked as he liked it, and he had heard some
warm words that day about the brilliancy of young Paul Hollister's
prospects. He took a drink of ice-water, tucked his napkin in the top of
his vest--a compromise allowed him by his wife at family dinners, and
smiled at his daughter. "Your mother tells me that you've had a letter
from Paul, saying that he'll be back shortly," he said with a jocosely
significant emphasis. "I suppose we shall hardly be able to get a
glimpse of you after he's in town again."

At this point, beginning to carve the roast, he had a sinking
premonition that it was going to be very tough, and though he heroically
resisted the ejaculation of embittered protest that rose to his lips,
this magnanimity cost him so dear that he did not think of Lydia again
till after he had served her automatically, dashing the mashed potato on
her plate with the gesture of an angry mason slapping down a trowelful
of mortar. It seemed to him at the moment that the past three weeks had
been one succession of tough roasts. He took another drink of ice-water
before he gloomily began on his first mouthful. It was worse than he
feared, and he was in no mood to be either very imaginative or very
indulgent to a girl's whims when Lydia said, suddenly and stiffly, "I
wish you wouldn't speak so about Paul. I don't know what makes everybody
tease me so about him!"

Her father was chewing grimly. "I don't know why they shouldn't, I'm
sure," he said. "Young folk