"I--think I'll go along," he said.

For an instant their eyes met, sympathetically, and did not smile though
their lips curved.

Down in the kitchen, meanwhile, Fairy sat somberly beside the table with
a pile of darning which she jabbed at viciously with the needle. Lark
was perched on the ice chest, but Carol, true to her childish instincts,
hunched on the floor with her feet curled beneath her. Connie leaned
against the table within reach of Fairy's hand.

"They're awfully slow," she complained once.

Nobody answered. The deadly silence clutched them.

"Oh, talk," Carol blurted out desperately. "You make me sick! It isn't
anything to be so awfully scared about. Everybody does it."

A little mumble greeted this, and then, silence again. Whenever it grew
too painful, Carol said reproachfully, "Everybody does it." And no one
ever answered.

They looked up expectantly when the men entered. It seemed cozier
somehow when they were all together in the little kitchen.

"Is she all right?"

"Sure, she's all right," came the bright response from their father. And
then silence.

"Oh, you make me sick," cried Carol. "Everybody does it."

"Carol Starr, if you say 'everybody does it' again I'll send you to
bed," snapped Fairy. "Don't we know everybody does it? But Prudence
isn't everybody."

"Maybe we'd better have a lunch," suggested their father hopefully,
knowing the thought of food often aroused his family when all other
means had failed. But his suggestion met with dark reproach.

"Father, if you're hungry, take a piece of bread out into the woodshed,"
begged Connie. "If anybody eats anything before me I shall jump up and
down and scream."

Their father smiled faintly and gave it up. After that the silence was
unbroken save once when Carol began encouragingly:

"Every--"

"Sure they do," interrupted Fairy uncompromisingly.

And then--the hush.

Long, long after that, when the girls' eyes were heavy, not with want of
sleep, but just with unspeakable weariness of spirit,--they heard a step
on the stair.

"Come on up, Harmer," the doctor called. And then, "Sure, she's all
right. She's fine and dandy,--both of them are."

Jerry was gone in an instant, and Mr. Starr looked after him with
inscrutable eyes. "Fathers are--only fathers," he said enigmatically.

"Yes," agreed Carol.

"Yes. In a crisis, the other man goes first."

His daughters turned to him then, tenderly, sympathetically.

"You had your