that he ever gave me quite
this locomotive-cab illusion you speak of."

"Well, he has me, lots of times," persisted Lydia. "It's awfully
exciting--you don't know where you're going, and you can't stop to
think, everything tears past you so fast and your breath is so blown out
of you. You feel like screaming. You forget everything else, you get
so--so stirred up and excited. But after it's over there's always a time
when things are flat. And this morning, and all day long, I've felt
very--different about what he wants and all. I don't believe I'm very
well, perhaps--or maybe--" she broke off, to say with emotion, "Oh,
Godfather, wouldn't it be too awful if I should turn out to be without
ambition." She pronounced the word with the reverence for its meaning
that had been drilled into her all her life, and looked at Dr. Melton
with troubled eyes.

He thrust his lips out with a grimace habitual to him in moments of
feeling, and for an instant said nothing. When he spoke his voice broke
on her name, as it had the night before when he had stood looking up at
her windows. "Oh, Lydia!--Oh, my dear, I'm terribly afraid of your
future!"

"I'm a little scared of it myself," she said tremulously, and hid her
face on his shoulder.

She was the first to speak. "Wouldn't Marietta just scream with laughter
at us?" she reminded him. "We _are_ foolish, too! There's nothing in the
world you could lay your finger on. There's nothing anyhow, I guess, but
nerves. I wouldn't dare breathe it to anybody else, but you always know
how I'm feeling, anyhow. It's as though--here I am, grown up, and
there's nothing for me to do that's worth while--even if--even
if--Paul--"

The doctor took a sudden resolution. "Why don't you talk to your father,
Lydia? Why don't you ask him about--"

He was cut short by Lydia's gesture of utter wonder. "_Father_? Don't
you know that there's a big trial on? He couldn't tell without figuring
up, if you should ask him quick, whether I'm fourteen or nineteen--or
nine! Mother wouldn't let me, anyhow, even if he could have any idea of
what I was driving at. She never let us bother him the least bit when
there was something big happening in his lawyering. I remember that
time I had pneumonia and nearly died, when I was a little girl, that she
told him I had just a cold; and he never knew any different for years
afterward, when I happened to say something about it. She didn't want
him worried when he needed all his w