. And
she's not dowered with an innate fondness for shrieking out
contradictions at the top of her voice, and unless you've a real passion
for that you get silenced early in life."

The lawyer laughed with the good-natured contempt of a large, silent man
for a small, voluble one. "That's a tragedy you can't know much about
from experience, Melton. No cruel force ever silenced you."

He paused at the walk leading to his house. A big street light glowed
and sputtered over their heads. "Come in, won't you, and see Lydia?"

"No; no cruel force has ever _silenced_ me," the doctor mused, putting
his hands slowly into his pockets, "but it has bound me hand and foot. I
talk, and I talk, but do you ever see me doing anything different from
the worst fools of us all?"

"Are you coming in?" The Judge spoke with his absent tolerance of his
doctor's fancies.

"No, thank you, as the farmer said to the steeple-climber. I'm going
home to my lonely office to give thanks to Providence that I'm not
responsible for a daughter."

The Judge frowned. "Nonsense! Look at Marietta."

"I do," said the doctor.

"Well--?" The lawyer was challenging. In the long run the doctor rubbed
him the wrong way.

"I hope you make a better job of bandaging Lydia's eyes than you did
hers."

The Judge had turned toward the house. At this he stopped and made an
irritated gesture. "Melton, you are enough to give a logical man brain
fever. You're always proclaiming that parents have no real influence
over their children's lives--that it's fate, or destiny, or
temperament--and now--you blame me because Marietta's discontented over
her husband's small income."

The doctor looked up quickly, his face twitching. "You think that's the
cause of Marietta's discontent? By Heaven, I wish Lydia could go into a
convent."

Suddenly his many-wrinkled little face set like a mask of tragedy. "Oh,
Nat, you know what Lydia's always been to me--like my own--as
precious--Oh, take care of her! take care of her! See, Lydia can't
fight. She can't, even if she knew what was going on to fight against--"
His voice broke. He looked up at his tall friend and shivered.

Judge Emery clapped him on the shoulder with a rough friendliness. "No
wonder you do miracles in curing women, Marius. You must know their
insides. You talk like a mother in a fit of the nerves over a sick
child. In the Lord's name, what has Lydia to fight against? If there was
ever a creature with a happy, s