She's like my
own to me. But she needs her sleep now. You'd better go softly
upstairs."

"Do you mean she's here?"

"What is it to you?" Norah, one bony hand clutching the newel post as if
it were a negotiable weapon of defense, and her brown eyes flashing as
if she were capable of using any weapon for Judith, barred the way up
the stairs.

"I tell you, she needs her sleep, poor lamb--poor lamb," she said, "and
you're not to go near her to-night. You're to promise me that. But she's
here fast enough. My lamb is safe at home in her own bed."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

On an afternoon in June a year later than the interrupted party at the
Everards' a young man sat at Mr. Theodore Burr's desk in Judge Saxon's
outer office. It was still technically Mr. Burr's desk, but the young
man looked entirely at home there. A litter of papers which that
fastidious gentleman would never have permitted himself now covered it,
and the air was faintly scented with the smoke of a cigarette widely
popular in Green River, but not with devotees of twenty-five-cent
cigars, like Mr. Burr. The bulky volume open on the desk was thumbed and
used as Mr. Burr had never used any book that looked or was so heavy.
The book was Thayer on Constitutional Law, and the young man dividing
his attention between it and Main Street under his window flooded with
June sunshine was Neil Donovan.

He divided his attention unequally, as Main Street late on that sunny
afternoon might persuade the most studious of young men to do. The
square was crowded--crowded, it is true, much as a busy street on the
stage is crowded, where the same overworked set of supers pass and
repass. The group of bareheaded girls now pacing slowly by arm in arm
under the window were returning from what was approximately their fourth
visit that afternoon to the post-office, the ice-cream parlours, the new
gift shop and tea-room, or some kindred attraction. The Nashes' new
touring car, driven by the prettiest girl in Willard's June house party,
under the devoted instruction of Willard himself, was whirling through
the shopping district for at least the third time.

However, it was an imposing pageant enough, though the boy at the window
did not appear to find it so, regarding it with approving but grave
eyes, and returning Mr. Nash's flourishing salute unsmilingly--a brave
pageant of gay and flimsy gowns, of youth returning to the town, and
movement and colour, and June fairly begun.