t."

"He only got in at five o'clock this afternoon, he said."

The two parents exchanged meaning glances over this chronology, and Mrs.
Emery flushed and smiled. "Now, Lydia," she said, "it's a perfect shame
I'm not well enough to be there when he comes. It would make it easier
for you. But I wish you'd say honestly whether you'd rather have your
father there or see Paul alone."

Judge Emery's face took on an aggrieved look of alarm. "Good gracious,
my dear! What good would I be? You know I can't be tactful. Besides,
I've got an appointment with Melton."

Lydia rose from where she knelt by the bed. Her chin was quivering.
"Why, you make me feel so--so queer! Both of you!--As though it were
anything--to see Paul--when I've known him always."

Her mother seized on the role opened to them by this speech, and said
quickly: "Why, of course! Aren't we silly! I don't know what possesses
us. When he comes you just run along and see him, and say your father
and I are sorry not to be there."

During the next half-hour she made every effort, heroically though
obviously seconded by her husband, to keep the conversation in a light
and casual vein, but when the door-bell rang, they all three heard it
with a start. Mrs. Emery said, very carelessly, "There he is, dear. Run
along and remember me to him." But she pulled Lydia down to her,
straightened a bow on her waist with a twitch, loosened a lock of the
girl's shining dark hair, and kissed her with a sudden yearning fervor.

After they were alone, Judge Emery laughed aloud. "You're just as bad as
I am, Sarah. You don't _say_ anything, but--"

"Oh, I know," his wife said; "I can't help it!" She deliberated
unresignedly over the situation for a moment, and then, "It seems as
though I couldn't have it so, to be sick just now, when I'm needed so
much. This first month is so important! And Lydia's getting such a
different idea of things from what I meant, having this awful time with
servants, and all. I have a sort of feeling once in a while that she's
getting notions!" She pronounced the word darkly.

"Notions?" Judge Emery asked. He had never learned to interpret his
wife's obscurities when the mantle of intuitions fell on her.

"Oh, don't ask me what kind! I don't know. If I knew I could do
something about it. But she speaks queerly once in a while, and the
evening of the day she was out with Marietta in the Black Rock woods she
was-- Do you know, I think it's not good for