David was quite a personage in Old Chester for a few days. Mrs. Richie was his slave, and hardly left him day or night; Dr. King came to see him five times in one week; Mrs. Barkley sent him some wine jelly in a sheaf-of-wheat mould; Dr. Lavendar climbed the hill on two afternoons, to play dominoes with him, though, as it happened, Mrs. Richie was not present either day to watch the game. The first time she had just gone to lie down, Sarah said; the second time she had that moment started out to walk—"Why, my goodness!" said Sarah, "she must 'a' just gone! She was here not a minute ago. I should 'a' thought she'd 'a' seen you tyin' up at the gate?"

"Well, evidently she didn't," Dr. Lavendar said, "or she would have waited. Tell her I'm sorry to miss her, Sarah." Then, eagerly, he went on up-stairs to David.

William King, too, was scarcely more fortunate; he only found her at home once, so at the end of the week he was unable to tell her that David was improving. It was, of course, necessary that she should be told this; so that was why he and Jinny continued to come up the hill for another week. At any rate that was the explanation he gave his Martha. "I must let her know just when David can go back to school," he said. And Martha, with a tightening lip remarked that she should have supposed a woman of Mrs. Richie's years could use her own judgment in such a matter.

William's explanation to Dr. Lavendar was somewhat fuller: "I make a point of calling, on the plea of seeing David, but it's really to see her. She's so high strung, that this little accident of his has completely upset her. I notice that she sort of keeps out of the way of people. I'm pretty sure that yesterday she saw me coming and slipped out into the garden to avoid me—think of that! Nervousness; pure nervousness. But I have a plan to brighten her up a little—a surprise-party. What do you say?"

Dr. Lavendar looked doubtful. "William," he said, "isn't life surprising enough? Now, here's Sam Wright's Sam's performance."

Dr. Lavendar looked care-worn, and with reason. Sam Wright's Sam had indeed provided a surprise for Old Chester. He had quietly announced that he was going to leave town.

"Going away!" repeated the senior warden. "What are you talking about?"

Sam said briefly that he wanted to try to get a drama he had written, published.

"You are out of your senses!" his father said; "I forbid it, sir. Do you hear me?"

Sam looked out of the window. "I shall go, I think, to-morrow," he said thoughtfully.

Samuel Wright stared at his wife in dumfounded silence. When he got his breath, he said in awful tones, "Eliza, he defies me! A child of mine, and lost to all sense of duty! I cannot understand it;—unless such things have happened in your family?" he ended with sudden suspicion.

"Never!" protested the poor mother; "but Samuel, my dear—Sammy, my darling—"

The senior warden raised a majestic hand. "Silence, if you please, Eliza." Then he thrust his right hand into his bosom, rested his left fist on the marble-topped centre-table, and advanced one foot. Standing thus, he began to tell his son what he thought of him, and as he proceeded his anger mounted, he forgot his periods and his attitudes, and his voice grew shrill and mean. But, alas, he could not tell the boy all that he thought; he could not tell him of his high ambitions for him, of his pitiful desire for his love, of his anguished fear lest he might be unhappy, or foolish, or bad. These thoughts the senior warden had never known how to speak. Instead, he detailed his grievances and his disappointments; he told Sam with ruthless candor what the world called his conduct: dishonest, idiotic, ungrateful. He had a terrifying string of adjectives, and through them all the boy looked out of the window. Once, at a particularly impassioned period, he glanced at his father with interest; that phrase would be fine in a play, he reflected. Then he looked out of the window again.

"And now," Mr. Wright ended sonorously, "what reply have you to make, sir?"

Sam looked confused. "I beg your pardon, father? I did not hear what you were saying."

Samuel Wright stared at him, speechless.

As for the boy, he said calmly, "Good night, father," and went up-stairs to his own room where he began his packing. The next morning he had gone.

"Where?" asked Dr. Lavendar, when the angry father brought him the news. "I do not know," said the senior warden, "and I do not—"

"Yes, you do," said Dr. Lavendar; "but that's not the point. The point is that it doesn't really matter, except for our comfort, whether we know or not. Sam is a man, and our protection is an impertinence. He's taking a dive on his own account. And as I look at it, he has a right to. But he'll come up for breath, and then we'll get some information. And he'll get some sense."

But of course the Wright family was in a most distressed state. The mother was overwhelmed with anxious grief; the father was consumed with mortification and blazing with anger.

"He didn't take his second-weight flannels," moaned Mrs. Wright; "he will catch cold. Oh, where is he? And nobody knows how to cook his hominy for him but our Betsy. Oh, my boy!"

"Good riddance," said Sam senior between his teeth; "ungrateful puppy!"

Dr. Lavendar had his hands full. To reassure the mother, and tell her that the weather was so warm that Sam couldn't use the second-weight flannels if he had them, and that when he came back Betsy's hominy would seem better than ever—"Old Chester food will taste mighty good, after a few husks," said Dr. Lavendar, cheerfully—to tell Sam senior that a grateful puppy would be an abnormal monster, and to refrain from telling him that whatever a father sows he is pretty sure to reap—took time and strength. So Dr. Lavendar did not enter very heartily into William King's plans for a surprise-party. However, he did promise to come, if the doctor succeeded in getting Old Chester together.

Meantime he and Danny and Goliath went up to The Top to tell Benjamin
Wright about Sam's Sam. The grandfather displayed no surprise.

"I knew he was going to clear out," he said; he was poking about among his canaries when Dr. Lavendar came in, and he stopped and sat down, panting. "These fowls wear me out," he complained. "Whiskey? No? Dear me! Your senior warden's got you to sign the pledge, I suppose? Well, I will; to drink the cub's health. He'll amount to something yet, if he doesn't eat his fatted calf too soon. Fatted calf is very bad for the digestion."

"Wright, I don't suppose you need to be told that you behaved abominably Sunday night? Do you know where Sam is?"

"I don't; and I don't want to. Behaved abominably? He wouldn't shake hands with me! Sam told me he was going, and I gave him some money—well! why do you look at me like that? Gad-a-mercy, ain't he my grandson? Besides, since our love-feast, ain't it my duty to help his father along? I've had a change of heart," he said, grinning; "where's your joy over the one sinner that repenteth? I'm helping young Sam, so that old Sam may get some sense. Lavendar, the man who has not learned what a damned fool he is, hasn't learned anything. And if I mistake not, the boy will teach my very respectable son, who won't smoke and won't drink, that interesting fact. As for the boy, he will come back a man, sir. A man! Anyway, I've done my part. I offered him money and advice—like the two women grinding at the mill, one was taken and the other was left. Yes; I've done my part. I've evened things up. I gave him his first tobie, and his first drink, and now I've given him a chance to see the world—which your senior warden once said was a necessary experience for a young man. I've evened things up!" He thrust a trembling hand down into the blue ginger-jar for some orange-skin. "He said he'd pay the money back; I said, 'Go to thunder!' As if I cared about the money. I've got him out of Old Chester; that's all I care about."

"Well," said Dr. Lavendar, "I hope you haven't got him merely out of the frying-pan."

"So you think there is no fire in Old Chester? She's a pretty creetur,
Lavendar, ain't she? Poor thing!"

Dr. Lavendar did not follow the connection of ideas in the older man's mind, but he did say to himself, as he and Goliath went away, that it was queer how possessed Benjamin Wright was that Sam's love-making was dangerous. Then he sighed, and his face fell into troubled lines. For all his brave words, he wished he knew where the boy was; and though he was already late for dinner, he drew up at William King's door to ask the doctor if he had any new ideas on the subject.

But Willy was not at home. Martha was sitting under the grape-vine trellis at the back door, topping and tailing gooseberries. From the kitchen behind her came the pleasant smell of preserving. She had a big yellow earthenware bowl in her lap, and excused herself for not rising when Dr. Lavendar came round the corner of the house to find her.

"I am a housekeeper, Dr. Lavendar. William thinks it's pretty not to understand housekeeping; but I expect if he didn't have preserves for his supper, he wouldn't think it was so pretty. No; he isn't at home, sir. He's gone out—with the thermometer at ninety—to see about that party he is getting up for Mrs., Richie. So long as he has time to spare from his patients, I should think he would like to take up my spare-room carpet for me. But, oh dear, no. He has to see about parties!"

"William is always doing friendly things," said Dr. Lavendar, sitting down on the door-step and helping himself to a gooseberry from Martha's bowl. "You are going to make some fool for the supper, of course?" He took off his hat, and wiped his forehead with his big red handkerchief.

"Oh, of course. I'm very tired, and I have my housekeeping to attend to; but I can make gooseberry fool. That's what I'm for."

"When is this party?" said Dr. Lavendar. "I declare, I've been so worried about Sam's Sam, I've forgotten."

"It's next week; Thursday. Yes; she can send that boy to his death, maybe; but we must have parties to cheer her up."

"Oh, come now," Dr. Lavendar remonstrated; "I don't believe a glimpse of the world will kill him. And nobody can blame Mrs. Richie for his foolishness. I suppose we are all going?"

"Everybody," Martha King said scornfully; "even Samuel Wright. He told his wife that he wouldn't have any nonsense about Sam, and she'd got to go. I think it's positively cruel; because of course everybody knows that the boy was in love with this housekeeper that doesn't know how to make soap!" Martha shook her bowl sharply, and the toppling green pyramid crumbled. Dr. Lavendar looked at her over his spectacles; instantly her face reddened, and she tossed her head. "Of course, you understand that I haven't the slightest personal feeling about it. That's one thing about me, Dr. Lavendar, I may not be perfect, but nobody despises anything like—that, more than I do. I merely regret William's judgment."

"Regret William's judgment! Why, think of the judgment he displayed in choosing a wife," said Dr. Lavendar. But when he climbed into his old buggy he had the grace to be ashamed of himself; he admitted as much to Danny. "For she's a sensible woman, Daniel, and, at bottom, kind." Danny yawned, and Dr. Lavendar added, "Poor Willy!"

Mrs. Richie's first hint of Dr. King's proposed festivity came a week later from David, who happened to be at home to dinner, and who saw fit to mention that Lydia Wright wasn't to be allowed to come up with her father and mother.

"Come up where?" Mrs. Richie said, idly. She was leaning forward, her elbows on the table, watching the child eat. When he said, "To your party to-night," she sat up in astonished dismay.

"My what? David! Tell me—exactly. Who is coming? Oh, dear!" she ended, tears of distress standing in her eyes.

David continued to eat his rice pudding. "Can I sit up till nine?"

Mrs. Richie pushed her chair back from the table, and caught her lower lip between her teeth. What should she do? But even as she asked herself the question, Dr. King stood, smiling, in the French window that opened on to the lawn.

"May I come in?" he said.

The fact was, a misgiving had risen in William's mind; perhaps a complete surprise would not be pleasant. Perhaps she would rather have an idea of what was going to happen. Perhaps she might want to dress up, or something. And so he dropped in to give a hint: "Half a dozen of us are coming in tonight to say how-do-you-do," he confessed, ("Whew! she doesn't need to dress up," he commented inwardly.) The red rose in her hair and her white cross-barred muslin with elbow sleeves seemed very elegant to William. He was so lost in admiration of her toilet, that her start of angry astonishment escaped him.

"Dr. King," said David, scraping up the sugar from his saucer, "is God good because He likes to be, or because He has to be?"

"David," said William King, "you will be the death of me!"

"Because, if He likes to be," David murmured, "I don't see why He gets praised; and if He has to be, why—"

"Dr. King," said Helena breathlessly, "I'm afraid—really, I'm not prepared for company; and—"

"Oh," said William, cheerfully, "don't bother about that. Mrs. King is going to bring up one or two little things, and I believe Mrs. Barkley has some ideas on the subject. Well, I must be going along. I hope you won't be sorry to see us? The fact is, you are too lonely up here with only David to keep you busy, though I must say, if he fires off questions like this one, I should think you would be pretty well occupied!"

When he had gone, Helena Richie sat looking blankly at David. "What on earth shall I do!" she said aloud.

"Did God make Sarah?" David demanded.

"Yes, dear, yes!"

"Did He make me, and the Queen, and my rabbits?"

"Why, of course. Oh, David, you do ask so many questions!"

"Everything has to be made," he ruminated.

She agreed, absently. David put his spoon down, deeply interested.

"Who made God?—another god, higher up?"

"I think," she said, "that I'll send word I have a headache!"

David sighed, and gave up theological research, "Dr. King didn't look at my scar, but I made Theophilus Bell pay me a penny to show it to him. Mrs. Richie, when I am a man, I'm never going to wash behind my ears. I tell Sarah so every morning, I'm going to see my rabbits, now. Good-by."

He slipped down from his chair and left her to her perplexity—as if she had not perplexity enough without this! For the last few days she had been worried almost to death about Mr. Benjamin Wright. She had not written to Lloyd yet of that terrible interview in the garden which would drive her from Old Chester; she had been afraid to. She felt instinctively that his mood was not hospitable to any plan that would bring her to live in the East. He would be less hospitable if she came because she had been found out in Old Chester. But her timidity about writing to him was a curious alarm to her; it was a confession of something she would not admit even long enough to deny it. Nevertheless, she did not write. "I will to-morrow," she assured herself each day, But now, on top of her worry of indecision and unacknowledged fear, came this new dismay—a party! How furious Lloyd would be if he heard of it; well, he must not hear of it. But what could she do? If she put it off with a flimsy excuse, it would only defer the descent upon her. How helpless she was! They would come, these people, they would be friendly; she could not escape them.

"Oh, I must stop this kind of thing," she said to herself, desperately.