ng you hadn't a right to keep to yourself. I'm
glad you saw that. Always start square with a woman. If you
do,--afterward,--she'll forgive you anything."

Lewis went to bed with the puzzled look still on his face. It was not
because he had _seen_ anything that he had told of Folly. He had told of
her simply as a part of chronology--something that couldn't be skipped
without leaving a gap. Now he wondered, if he had had time to think,
would he have told? He had scarcely put the question to himself when
sleep blotted out thought.

On the next day Leighton had the bays hitched to what was left of the
carryall, and with Silas and Lewis drove over to Aunt Jed's to pay his
respects to Mrs. Leighton. Natalie and Lew went off for a ramble in the
hills. Mammy bustled about her kitchen dreaming out a dream of an early
dinner for the company, and murmuring instructions to Ephy, a pale
little slip of a woman whom the household, seeking to help, had
installed as helper. Mrs. Leighton stayed with Leighton out under the
elms. They talked little, but they said much.

It was still early in the day when Leighton said:

"I shall call you Ann. You must call me Glen."

"Of course," answered Mrs. Leighton, and then wondered why it was "of
course." "I suppose," she said aloud, "it's 'of course' because of Lew.
I feel as though I were sitting here years ahead, talking to Lew when
his head will be turning gray."

"Don't!" cried Leighton. "Don't say that! Lew travels a different road."

Mrs. Leighton looked up, surprised at his tone.

"Perhaps you don't see what we can see. Perhaps you don't know what you
have done for Lew."

"I have done nothing for Lew," said Leighton, quickly. "If anything has
been done for Lew, it was done in the years when I was far from him in
body, in mind, and in spirit. Lew would have been himself without me. It
is doubtful whether he would have been himself without you. I--I don't
forget that."

CHAPTER XLVI

At four o'clock Leighton sent for Silas.

"Take the team home, Silas," he said. "We're going to walk. Come along,
Lew."

"It's awfully early, Dad," said Lew, with a protesting glance at the
high sun.

"The next to the last thing a man learns in social finesse," said
Leighton, "and the very last rule that reaches the brain of woman, is to
say good-by while it's still a shock to one's hosts."

"And it's still a shock to-day," said Mrs. Leighton, smiling. "But you
mustn't quarrel with what