what you want me to do when you want me to do
it--and I'll try."

"Oh, there'll be a lot of things in which we shall have to pull
together," he said, as he held her hand. "I want you to remember, if
ever any trouble comes, that"--he hesitated for a word that wouldn't say
too much for the moment--"that I'll be there."

"Thank you, Thor. That's a great comfort."

She withdrew her hand quietly. Quietly, too, she assured him, as she
moved toward the steps, that she would not fail to force herself again
on Rosie Fay. "And about that other matter--the one you spoke of
first--you'll tell me more by and by, won't you?"

After her capacity for ringing true, his conscientiousness prompted him
to let her see that she could feel quite sure of him. "I'll tell you
anything I can find out; and one of these days, Lois, I must--I
must--say a lot more."

She mounted a step or two without turning away from him. "Oh, well," she
said, lightly, as though dismissing a topic of no importance, "there'll
be plenty of time."

But her smile was a happy one--so happy that he who smiled rarely smiled
back at her from the runabout.

He could scarcely be expected to know as yet that his pleasure was not
in any happiness of hers, but in the help she might bring to a little
creature whose image had haunted him all the afternoon--a little
creature whose desperate flower-like face looked up at him from a
background of poinsettias.

CHAPTER V

On coming to the table that evening Claude begged his mother to excuse
him for not having dressed for dinner, on the ground that he had an
engagement with Billy Cheever. Mrs. Masterman pardoned him with a
gracious inclination of the head that made her diamond ear-rings
sparkle. No one in the room could be unaware that she disapproved of
Claude's informality. Not only did it shock her personal delicacy to
dine with men who concealed their shirt-bosoms under the waistcoats they
had worn all day, but it contravened the aims by which during her entire
married life she had endeavored to elevate the society around her. She
herself was one to whom the refinements were as native as foliage to a
tree. "It's all right, Claudie dear; but you do know I like you to dress
for the evening, don't you?" Without waiting for the younger son to
speak, she continued graciously to the elder: "And you, Thor. What have
you been doing with yourself to-day?"

Her polite inclusion of her stepson was meant to start "her men