to gray street clothes and carried a suitcase. I noted that the
diamond had disappeared from his finger and his curly head looked as if
it had been held under a water-faucet and vigorously toweled to lessen
the brilliantine gloss.

"If you'll tell us where your farm is, Mr. Locke, we'll start," he
volunteered.

Phillida looked up at him with eyes of adoring trust.

"I had the porter at the Terminal check my suitcase to be called for. We
shall have to get it, dear."

In spite of myself, I smiled at their amazing promptitude. There was
both reassurance and pathos in its unconscious youth. All this eagerness
pressing forward--where? They did not know, nor I. Certainly we did not
dream how strange a goal awaited one of us three, or on what weird,
desolate path that traveler's foot was already set.

"You had better go to a good hotel for tonight," I modified their plan.
"Tomorrow is time enough to go out to the farm, by daylight. Phil has
had enough excitement for one day. I will write full directions for the
trip, Vere, on the back of this timetable of the railroad you must
take."

They were enchanted with this suggestion. Indeed, they were in a state
of mind to have assented if I advised them to sit out on a park bench
until morning.

Yet, when I had put them and their scanty luggage into a taxicab, I
suffered a bad pang of misgiving. What responsibility was I assuming in
letting my little-girl cousin go like this? What did I know of this man,
or where he would take her? I think Phillida divined something of my
trouble, for she leaned out the door to me and held up her face like a
child's to be kissed.

"I am so _happy_," she whispered.

I turned to Vere; who had a long envelope in readiness to put in my
hand.

"I guess you might like to have these for a while, Mr. Locke," he said,
with one of his slow, straightforward glances.

With which farewells I had to be content, and watch their taxi swing out
into the bright-dark flow of traffic where it was lost from my sight.
After which, I entered another taxicab by my unromantic self and was
driven to that railroad station where I would find a train bound to the
college town that was the home of Aunt Caroline and her husband. One
always thought of Phil's parents in that order, although the Professor
was a moderately distinguished scientist and his spouse merely masterful
in her own limited circle.

The envelope Vere had given me contained their marriage certifi