called Lucy in, and put his plea to all of them.

"It is my hope," he said, "to carry on exactly as though Dick might walk
in to-morrow and take his place again. As I hold to my belief in God,
so I hold to my conviction that he will come back, and that before
I--before long. But our friends will be asking where he is and what he
is doing, and we would better agree on that beforehand. What we'd better
say is simply that Dick was called away on business connected with
some property in the West. They may not believe it, but they'll hardly
disprove it."

So the benevolent conspiracy to protect Dick Livingstone's name was
arranged, and from that time on the four of them who were a party to it
turned to the outside world an unbroken front of loyalty and courage.
Even to Minnie, anxious and red-eyed in her kitchen, Lucy gave the same
explanation while she arranged David's tray.

"He has been detained in the West on business," Lucy said.

"He might have sent me a postcard. And he hasn't written Doctor Reynolds
at all."

"He has been very busy. Get the sugar bowl, Minnie. He'll be back soon,
I'm sure."

But Minnie did not immediately move.

"He'd better come soon if he wants to see Doctor David," she said, with
twitching lips. "And I'll just say this, Mrs. Crosby. The talk that's
going on in this town is something awful."

"I don't want to hear it," Lucy said firmly.

She ate alone, painfully remembering that last gay little feast before
they started away. But before she sat down she did a touching thing. She
rang the bell and called Minnie.

"After this, Minnie," she said, "we will always set Doctor Richard's
place. Then, when he comes--"

Her voice broke and Minnie, scenting a tragedy but ignorant of it, went
back to her kitchen to cry into the roller towel. Her world was gone to
pieces. By years of service to the one family she had no other world, no
home, no ties. She was with the Livingstones, but not one of them. Alone
in her kitchen she felt lonely and cut off. She thought that David, had
he not been ill, would have told her.

Lucy found David moving about upstairs some time later, and when she
went up she found him sitting in Dick's room, on a stiff chair inside
the door. She stood beside him and put her hand on his shoulder, but he
did not say anything, and she went away.

That night David had a caller. All evening the bell had been ringing,
and the little card tray on the hatrack was filled with visit