a searching inquiry into her mother's last illness. But of
course if you think this not wise I am glad to be guided by your
judgment, Katie."

"Wayne!" she reproached laughingly. "Now you know well enough! I simply
meant if you saw Ann wished to avoid a subject, not to pursue it."

"Thanks again, dear Sister Kate, for these easy lessons in
behavior. Rule 1--"

But she waved it laughingly aside, rising to leave him. "Just the same,"
she maintained, from the doorway, "experience may make the familiar
things--and dear things--the very things of which one wishes least to
speak. Talk to Ann about the army, Wayne; talk about--"

But as he was holding out note-book and pencil she beat grimacing
retreat.

That night Miss Jones dreamed. The world had been all shaken up and
everything was confused and no one could put it to rights. All those
dames whose ancestors had sailed unknown waters were in the front row of
the chorus, and all the chorus girls were dancing a stately minuet at Old
Point Comfort. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was trying to commit suicide by
becoming a biological freak, and the Madonna of the Chair was wearing a
smartly tailored brown rajah suit.

CHAPTER XI

Peacefully and pleasantly one day slipped after another. Some thirty of
them had joined their unnumbered fellows and to-morrow bade fair to pass
serenely as yesterday. "This, dear Queen," Katie confided to the dog
stretched at her feet, "is what in vulgar parlance is known as 'nothing
doing,' and in poetic language is termed the 'simple life.'"

Thirty days of "nothing doing"--and yet there had been more "doing" in
those days than in all the thousands of their predecessors gaily crowded
to the brim. Those crowded days seemed days of a long sleep; these quiet
ones, days of waking.

Ann was out on the links that afternoon with Captain Prescott. From
her place on the porch Katie had a glimpse of them at that moment.
Ann's white dress with its big knot of red ribbon was a vivid and a
pleasing spot. The olive of the Captain's uniform seemed part of the
background of turf and trees--all of it for Ann, so live and so pretty
in white and red.

He was seeking to correct her stroke. Both were much in earnest about it.
It would seem that the whole of Ann's life hung upon that thing of better
form in her golf. Finally she made a fair drive and turned to him
jubilantly. He was commending enthusiastically and Ann quite pranced
under his enthusiasm. S