n family was instantaneous. They didn't suspect
that it was deliberate.

Rodney had made his great announcement to her, characteristically, over
the telephone, from his office. "Do you remember asking me, Freddy, two
or three weeks ago, who Rosalind Stanton was? Well, she's the girl I'm
going to marry."

She refused to hear a word more in those circumstances. "I'm coming
straight down," she said, "and we'll go somewhere for lunch. Don't you
realize that we can't talk about it like this? Of course you wouldn't,
but it's so."

Over the lunch table she got as detailed an account of the affair as
Rodney, in his somnambulistic condition, was able to give her, and she
passed it on to Martin that evening as they drove across to the north
side for dinner.

"Well, that all sounds exactly like Rodney," he commented. "I hope
you'll like the girl."

"That isn't what I hope," said Frederica. "At least it isn't what I'm
most concerned about. I hope I can make her like me. Roddy's the only
brother I've got in the world, and I'm not going to lose him if I can
help it. That's what will happen if she doesn't like me."

Frederica was perfectly clear about this, though she admitted it had
taken her fifteen minutes or so to see it.

"All the way down-town to talk to Rodney," she said, "I sat there
deciding what she ought to be like--as if she were going to be brought
up to me to see if she'd do. And then all at once I thought, what good
would it do me to decide that she wouldn't? I couldn't change his
relation to her one bit. But, if she decides I won't do, she can change
his relation to me pretty completely. It's about the easiest thing a
wife can do.

"Well, I'm going to see her, and her mother and sister--that's the
family--to-morrow. And if they don't like me before I come away and
think of me as a nice sort of person to be related by marriage to, it
won't be because I haven't tried. It will be because I'm just a
naturally repulsive person and can't help it."

As it happened though, she forgot all about her resolution almost with
her first look at Rose. Rodney's attempts at description of her had been
well meaning; but what he had prepared his sister for, unconsciously of
course, in his emphasis on one or two phases of their first
acquaintance, had been a sort of slatternly Amazon. But the effect of
this was, really, very happy; because when a perfectly presentably clad,
well-bred, admirably poised young girl came into the r