ld
hear what they said. Uncle Marius said: "It's no use, Rankin. It's a
fixed idea with her. She isn't violent any more, but she hasn't changed.
She is certainly a little deranged, but not enough for legal restraint.
She could take Ariadne and disappear any day. I'm in terror lest she do
that. I've no authority to prevent her. She won't talk to me freely
about what she is afraid of. She doesn't seem to trust me--_me_!"

Ariadne found the conversation as dull as all overheard grown-ups' talk,
and tried to busy herself with a corn-cob house the new man had been
showing her how to build. Two or three times lately he had taken her out
to his little house in the woods and showed her a lot of tools, and told
her what they were for, and said if she were older he would teach her
how to use them. Ariadne's head was full of the happy excitement of
those visits. Corn-cob houses were for babies, she thought now.

After a time, Uncle Marius went away, slamming the front gate after him
and stamping away up the street as though he were angry, only he did all
kinds of queer things without being angry. In fact, she had never seen
him angry. Perhaps he and Muvver were different from other people and
never were.

She looked up with a start. The new man had come back to the arbor, but
he did not look like play. He looked queer, so queer that Ariadne's
sensitive lower lip began to tremble and the corners of her mouth to
draw down. She could _not_ remember having done anything naughty. She
was frightened by the way he looked. And yet, he picked her up quite
gently, and held her on his knee, and asked her if Muvver could walk
about the house yet.

"Oh, yes," she told him, "and came down to dinner last night."

The new man put her down, and asked her with a "please" and "I'd be much
obliged" as though she were a grown-up herself, if she would do
something for him--go to Muvver and ask her if she felt strong enough to
come down into the grape-arbor to see him. Tell her he had something
very special to say to her.

Ariadne went, skipping and hopping in pleasurable excitement at her own
importance, and returned triumphantly to say that Muvver said she would
come. She wondered if he felt too grown-up for cob houses himself. He
hadn't built it any higher when she was gone. He looked as if he hadn't
even winked. While she stood wondering at his silence, his face got very
white. He stood up looking toward the house. Muvver was coming out, very