When Lucy Dean returned to the den, she found Brooke leaning upon the desk, her head still pillowed by her arms, and fast asleep. Checking her first impulse to waken Brooke and discuss the episode of the reporter, Lucy stood thinking a moment, looked at the clock, then, drawing a sheet of paper toward her, wrote a few words upon it in vigorous upright characters, placed it where the sleeper could not fail to see it the moment her eyes opened, and, after rearranging her furs, that she had thrown off when she had returned from her walk, vanished from the room.

Her coming and going made a mental movement, for there had been no sound. Brooke raised her head, and looking about in a dazed way spied the note, which said, “As everybody and thing seems to be asleep, have gone home to dine with father; will be back before ten.”

It was a positive relief to Brooke to be quite alone for a few hours, and it would also give her the chance to see the physicians more satisfactorily; they were due about six.

Going to her own room, she found her mother had returned to the sick room, so, slipping on a wrapper and loosening the tension of hair-pains, she busied herself by laying away in closet and dresser various things that had lain about since two nights before, which Olga, the maid, under stress of confusion, had neglected. Taking up her great chinchilla muff from a chair, she was shaking it in an absent-minded fashion before putting it in its box, when something slipped from it and fell lightly to the carpet. Groping in the dim light, she picked up, not her card case, as she expected, but the silk-covered catalogue of the Parkses’ pictures and the souvenir menu in its frame of silver filigree. It was only two days since she had put them in her muff, but it seemed almost as if she were looking back from another world.

The catalogue naturally opened to the little reproduction of Marte Lorenz’ picture. Cutting it carefully from the page, she slipped it into the silver frame, which chanced to be of the exact size, and setting it upon the dressing table, turned on the light above. Somehow the sight of it gave her comfort more than anything else could, and the separation of circumstances and distance seemed suddenly to have grown less. Whatever the interpretation of the picture might be, whatever else might tide, she had entered into and formed a part of the artist’s first serious work, and even if they never met again, they would be comrades upon the canvas as long as it lasted. For, in spite of the veiling of both the likenesses by certain subtle touches, it did not obliterate the characteristics of the two; and the longer that Brooke gazed upon the picture the stronger grew her conviction that, under guise of an attractive composition, it was he and she that Lorenz had painted, that he had bound together forever by some mystical inspiration.

Still Brooke did not formulate her feelings toward this man who had been the first one to tell her the truth when an untruth or evasion would have had a pleasanter sound; such a thing did not occur to her. Lucy Dean would have dragged her emotion into the electric light, diagnosed, and duly labelled it at once. Neither did Brooke kiss the portrait nor put it under her pillow, nor hide it away in her orris-scented drawer for sentiment’s sake or to feed mystery, as many a girl would have done; but as the light glared upon the glass she turned it out, and lighting a small green candle of bayberry wax, that stood upon her desk, placed it near the frame so that its rays fell obliquely in accord with the picture’s scheme of light, while the pungent fragrance of the wax wafted like incense at a shrine.

As she stood thus, the outer door closed, a squeaky tread awkwardly muffled came along the hallway, and stopping outside her door made her turn hastily. Without further ado the door opened, and a pair of lean, sloping shoulders and a freckled face topped by a mop of sandy hair parted the curtain, while two dull, greenish hazel eyes, very round and wide open, explored the room to the very corners with an expression of apprehension. Evidently being satisfied with the result, the rest of the six feet of overgrown boy followed the head, swinging a suit case before him with one hand, while he closed the door behind him with the other.

Brooke was almost startled into calling out aloud, but the figure clapped his hand to her mouth, and her voice dropped to a whispered “Oh, Cub, Cub, where did you come from? How did you hear?”

“Why, from school, to be sure, Sis, and I heard from Mummy, else I hadn’t dared, or couldn’t have come,—she sent me a ten,—for I spent all that was left of my quarterly on Pam; she was worth it, even if I’d have had to walk. I’ve only had her a month, but she knows my whistle out of twenty, and she just loves me; yes, she does, you ought to see her look at me with her head on one side. I’ve just left her below with the engineer till I saw if the coast was clear. I’ll bring her up to you, unless you think father’s likely to come in. Then I suppose I’ll have to take her to the stable for keeps.”

While the boy rattled on, Brooke was recalling the fact of her brother’s letter, and that her mother had told her about sending for him to come home in spite of everything. He had come, then, in response to that and knew nothing of what had happened.

“Father will not come in,” she said, going to him and speaking very quietly to gain time, also because she did not know exactly how best to break the matter to this sixteen-year-old brother of hers, who, partly through perversity, but chiefly because his father had never understood his temperament or considered him as an individual, was the sort of cross between a mule and a firebrand dubbed “an impossibility” by people in general.

“Who or what is Pam?”

“She! She’s the finest year-old brindled pup you ever rolled your eyes on, only a quarter English for bone and grit, and the rest Boston for looks. Her father’s got eight firsts, and Bill Bent’s father owns the mother, and she’s reckoned the finest bitch shown this year. I paid fifty, but if Bill hadn’t been my chum, two hundred was the price! I called her Pam, after Mummy, you know, and I thought maybe she’d keep her for her own if father sends me off again to where they won’t have Pam. Lots of women have Boston bulls to ride out with them every day,” while, at the likelihood of catastrophe in connection with his pet, the animation that had lighted the boy’s face and shown the improving possibility of latent manhood died out, a weary look replacing it, and the Cub dropped into a lounging chair and began to cough, holding his hand to his side.

“If you think I’d better not bring her up, I’ll take her round to the stable right away,” he said, when the fit had passed over.

“Leave her downstairs for now,” said Brooke; “I’m not sure if there is any stable to-day,” and sitting on the arm of the chair, untangling his mop of hair with her strong, slender fingers, a proceeding that he did not resent as roughly as usual, she began to give him a brief history of the past two days. At first he looked at her in amazement, as if he thought that she had lost her mind, then his head sank, and when she finished and tried to take his hand, he pulled it away, and, turning from her, buried his face in the chair back, breaking into long sobs that almost strangled him, and that he could not stifle.

In vain Brooke tried to comfort him, to find if there was anything on his mind of which she did not know. Her brother had never been emotional in this way, and though she knew that her father’s strictness with the boy was a sign that all his hope was in him, she never dreamed the Cub would care so much, if at all. Pushing her away, he staggered toward the door, his face still hidden by his hands.

“Where are you going? you must be very quiet,” said Brooke, getting between him and the curtain.

“To mother! I want my mother! I must have her all to myself, and father can’t prevent it now!” Then, to her amazement, Brooke realized that her brother’s tears were not born of grief, but of hysterical relief at release from a mental and physical bondage that had fretted and cramped and warped his very soul.

“Stay here,” she begged, “and I will bring mother to you!” Turning back, with a look that told the boy better than words that she understood his outburst, and did not brand it as foolishness, she said: “Be careful of her, for I know now that you and I must be father and mother, and do some hard thinking, and perhaps acting, in these next few weeks, for they cannot. Will you stand by me, Adam?” Then the boy did not push away the hands that rested on his shoulders, but held his sister close, awkwardly, it is true, but as he had not clung to her since the old days in the down-town house, when as a little girl she stooped over his crib to kiss him good night.

The doctors came, and when they left, Mrs. Lawton went to her son. An hour passed, dinner was served, and still the two did not come out. Brooke went to the door, then prepared and carried in a tray of food, eating her own meal afterward in solitary silence that was very soothing to her.

For the first time she had been able to see the specialist alone, and put such definite questions to him as dispersed the usual non-committal generalities, while at the same time it convinced him that here was a member of the family to whom the truth might and should be told. It was possible that her father might recover from this attack, if there was no further hemorrhage; also that the clot that plugged the brain channel might be absorbed, the paralysis of face, leg, and arm relax, and speech and memory return, so that though full vigour would never again be his he might still have years of placid living and enjoyment. Or else he might regain his physical faculties without the brain cloud ever lifting. As for medicine, a few simple regulations and then quiet must do its work, coupled with constant care. His failure and its agitation had struck the blow, and of this cause not the faintest suggestion must reach him or be even whispered of, for in such cases no one may precisely tell how much of conscious unconsciousness exists.

Meanwhile the laws of trade must be carried on, and others, to keep their rights, sift and settle Adam Lawton’s affairs as far as possible, before Brooke could learn what they as a family had or did not have and by it measure what might be done. For neither mother nor daughter knew of the extent of this final venture of all, and beyond keeping domestic accounts and holding a joint key with her father to a box in an up-town safe deposit company, where family papers and some securities belonging to her mother were kept, Brooke was no partner in her father’s affairs. In fact one of the things, Mr. Dean said, that had hurried the crisis and complicated its untangling was the habit that Adam Lawton had formed of holding aloof from the advice and confidence of his fellows.

Later in the evening, when the Cub emerged from Brooke’s room, he found that she had taken the nurse’s place by her father and the library was empty. While he walked about the room restlessly, alternately enjoying his comparative liberty or wondering what he had best do about his dog, something led him to cross the hall and turn the angle to the den, where, to his intense astonishment, amid a blaze of lights, that contrasted vividly with the semi-dark silence of the other rooms, was Lucy Dean, in the great leather-covered Morris chair, upon one arm of which sat the bull pup, whose persuasive pink tongue had just succeeded at the moment he entered in touching Lucy’s nose in affectionate salute.

“Brooke told me about the dear, and I went down and fished her out of an old box, where they had bedded her, just in time to save her from spoiling her figure with a whole bowl of oatmeal and soup,” said Lucy, in answer to the question on the Cub’s face. “You’ve got to be very particular about feeding her, remember, or she’ll grow groggy and sleepy and wheeze, instead of keeping her sporting blood up—” and Lucy held out her unoccupied left hand to the boy, who, after the callowness and fervour of youth, regarded this friend of his sister’s, eight years his senior, with her dash and vim, as the combination of everything admirable and adorable and himself her equal in years.

“No, I’m not going to kiss you this time,” she continued, leaning back in the chair, as he half stooped behind her; “I’ve just transferred that to Pam here. Why? Because you’ve gained a year and two inches since I saw you when you came home last Christmas—and sixteen is a good stile to stop at. Then hands off, young man, and no kisses outside the family until you are twenty-one and able to shoulder your own responsibilities.” The Cub growled out something half sulkily.

“Yes, I know I never had an own brother, but I’ve been a good sister to more of you boys than were ever born even in a Mormon family, and I’ve kept them all for good friends, just such as you’re going to be. No, don’t mope and go over in the corner, because within five minutes you’ll simply have to come back again and sit by Pam and me—so you might as well do it now.

“That’s it, stretch and be comfortable! See, chains wouldn’t keep Pam away from you now! Do you know I don’t blame you for squandering your last penny on this bull pup—her points are all right, she has an angel disposition; but she doesn’t forget to whom she belongs for a single minute—it was all I could do to drag her past your coat in the hall! But suppose she barks, how can you keep her here?”

“That’s the point, I must take her over to the stable right away; but you’ll be here when I come back, won’t you? I think Brooke said you were stopping here.”

“I was, but I guess now that you are here, I’ll go home. I stayed so that Brooke shouldn’t be lonely; besides, I have your room.”

“That don’t count,” protested the Cub, “I can sleep here just as well as not.”

“Oh, there is one other thing,” added Lucy. “I’m not so sure who there is at the stable or how they would treat Pam, so best not take her there. I’m so glad that you have come home, boy. I dined with dad to-night and tried to learn as much as I could about this money trouble of your father’s, and it is about as bad as can be, and though of course it may be some time before it can be known exactly how things stand, there is little doubt but when what’s left of the apple is divided there won’t be even the core for you all. Of course, if the illness had not come, some arrangement might have been made to tide things over. Suppose you take Pam down to our house to-night, and stay there and have a talk with dad. He will tell Brooke all he knows to-morrow. Don’t go yet, it’s only nine, half an hour later will do as well as now.

“Tell me, what is the matter with you, honour bright? Are you really sick or only sort of lazy and shilly-shally, obstinate, discouraged, and crazy to get out of jail? I know the symptoms, for I’ve had them all one by one, in my youth, doing everything by rule, duty the watchword, more mathematics the penalty for forgetting it, and dyspepsia the result. My sons shall be reared in the open, if they never get beyond horse-breaking and cattle-breeding,” and a shiver of sympathy ran down Lucy’s flexible spine, branching off in an odd twisting of her fingers that sent her handkerchief, that she had rolled into a ball to amuse the pup, flying across the room, much to the amusement of Pam, who caught it, and made her master jump to rescue the roll of cambric and lace from her investigating paws.

“Honour bright, Lucy, it’s the being shut up so much, and the confounded mathematics and knowing that I never seem to satisfy the old man on top of that. If he’d only let me work at something I like, and learn to do something out-of-doors, but at this rate I think I’m getting consumption—” and the Cub gave a really dismal cough.

“Of course a man must know how to count, and a few little things like that, no matter what he does,” said Lucy, so seriously that the boy did not at first realize that she was mocking him; “for whether you handle your own or some other person’s money, or eggs and potatoes, counting will be a painful necessity.

“Oh, oh! what is this?” she exclaimed, as in handing her back her handkerchief the thumb and forefinger of his right hand caught her eye. These were stained a brownish yellow on the inside. Spreading the fingers apart, she looked the boy in the face, and he flushed scarlet under his freckles.

“Been smoking cigarettes, on the sly, of course, and consequently in a hurry, swallowed the smoke, and sometimes chewed the butts to pulp! There is half the cause why your head won’t work right, as well as one reason why you are lanky and cough. See here, young man, do you know that only what-is-its and mistakes smoke cigarettes? Men smoke pipes, or cigars if they can afford them; and I’m going to give you a pipe on your next birthday, with Pam’s head carved on a meerschaum bowl. I’ll get Charlie Ashton to order it to-morrow; he knows a fellow who carves pipes that are perfect dreams. Meantime not a whiff or sniff of a cigarette. Yes, of course it’s hard to stop, they all say that, but really, Cub, it’s a horrid trick. Yes, I know all about it; I tried cigarettes once myself. Empty your pockets quick and swear off.”

At first the boy had looked annoyed, and a curious, obstinate expression, akin to that of a horse putting back his ears, crossed his features, flattening them; but it only lasted a moment. It was impossible to be angry with Lucy, for her tongue was pointed with common sense born of experience, and there was never anything censorious or priggish in her strictures.

So the Cub produced two packages of cigarettes, an amber holder, and a silver match-box, and piled them in the outstretched hand of his mentor.

“Keep the match-box, and we’ll give those things to the ‘grasshoppers’ that go around the street picking up cigar stumps with a spike in the end of a stick.” So saying, the vigorous young woman opened the window, and with a sidewise motion skittled the cigarettes through the air into the street below, much to the alarm of an old gentleman upon whose shoulders a shower from the first box fell. He had come out of the house to sample the weather and immediately returned for umbrella and goloshes, while the second box landed intact on the top of a passing hansom, much to the driver’s satisfaction.

Then the Cub brought his suit case, and, picking up Pam, went to carry out Lucy’s suggestion, while she, after watching him go, said half aloud:—

“He’s all right if you only understand him. I’ll give Brooke a hint. I shouldn’t wonder if this smashup will give him a push and his chance—for somebody has got to go to work in this family, and pretty quick, too, according to father’s ideas.

“Heigh-ho, I wonder what Tom Brownell will have to say in the Daily Forum to-morrow. Will he make a sensation column of us,—I mean of Brooke and her object lesson,—or will he turn his back on the devil and give out a simple, dignified statement regardless of making copy? No, I don’t wonder either, I’ll gamble he’s straight as a plumb-line. Gracious, what did I do with those keys?” and Lucy began feeling in the gold chain bag that hung from her belt, as, hearing Brooke leave her father’s room, she went to join her.

The Daily Forum not only corrected its insinuation of the previous day, but printed a further statement, the sincerity and judiciousness of which at once made the financial disaster of Adam Lawton secondary to his physical collapse. This allowed the numerous family friends and acquaintances the chance to offer sympathy with perfect good taste, which in the conventional society of the Whirlpool usually takes the place of more spontaneous warm-heartedness.

For many days a stream of callers came and went from the St. Hilaire, some content merely to leave a card with inquiries, others asking for Mrs. Lawton or Brooke, emphasizing their offer of “doing something” with a hand-shake, but asking no prying questions. Still others, as “intimate friends” of the family, as the days wore on and it was definitely known that though the creditors might in time receive dollar for dollar, there would be nothing over, not only called, but stayed and mingled advice and chiding with their verbal sympathy.

“Reduced to absolute beggars,” was the term that Mrs. Ashton, Lucy Dean’s aunt, applied to the Lawtons when discussing the affair at a luncheon she was giving, where all the guests were women of Mrs. Lawton’s class and set, though few of them had her gentle breeding, “and if Mrs. Lawton and quixotic Brooke had not had such ridiculous scruples as to what belonged to whom, quite a lump might have been rescued for them, my brother says.”

“My dear Susie,” protested Mrs. Parks, who since her housewarming was fast advancing in power and called several exclusives by their first names by request, “that is not a fault that can be often found with any one nowadays. The Senator says that through all this business it was precisely the same trait in Adam Lawton of not being quite willing to knock down others and make them serve as scaling ladders that dealt him out at last.”

“The question is now,” continued Mrs. Ashton, “What shall we be expected to do for them? They will leave the St. Hilaire the 1st of January; Mr. Dean has manipulated things so far as that for them, and he wants them to put Mr. Lawton into a partly endowed sanatorium of which he himself is a trustee, as all the physicians say he must be kept out of turmoil. The Cub, as they call the boy, is rather out of health, so that a year on a school-ship would be a good place for him. They say if he went into an office at once, as Mr. Dean expected, it would probably kill him.

“Brooke, of course, will have to take up her painting, teach, and paint bonbon boxes for Cuyler and Gaillard, or menus for us. We can all use influence to get her work of that sort, and it will help out for a time until we get sick of her style probably. Lucy swears that Brooke shall live with her; we shall see. I think that there will be something a year from some little investment they have, with which Mrs. Lawton might board in some cheap place, not of course in New York, but Brooklyn or up in the Bronx.”

“Don’t, pray don’t suggest boarding in those dreadful places for that sweet, sensitive woman; it would be like putting lilies-of-the-valley in a saucepan,” cried Mrs. Parks with warm-hearted energy; “it’s too awful! I would be only too glad to have her live with me, if she could put up with the whirl of it, and Brooke too. I often wish that I had an elder sister in the house with whom I could talk things over comfortably and not have them spread over the face of the earth. The hard part of this is that whatever is done the family will be split to kindlings, and it’s no joke parting a mother and son!” For be it said that since the arrival of the belated and beruffled little man in the Easter-egg crib, though Mrs. Parks’s social ambition had rather increased than diminished, the cold-heartedness that is often a part of a social career was altogether lacking.

“Besides, suppose that Mr. Lawton comes back to himself suddenly, for you know they say that it sometimes happens when this aphasia (I’m always possessed to call it aspasia, after the snake that bit Cleopatra) lifts—how will he feel to find himself in an institution and his family scattered?”

“I don’t see that it concerns us,” said Mrs. Ashton, shrugging her shoulders. “If he had only died at once and been done with it, they would all have been comfortable, for my brother says that he carried a simply fabulous life insurance, and that the keeping it up was what made him so economical.”

It was the last week in December, Christmas week. Brooke and her mother sat opposite each other in the den in a silence that was keeping the brain of each more active than the most rapid speech. Although Adam Lawton had not spoken, the tension that had drawn his face had relaxed, and sensation was slowly returning to his foot, though his right hand was still quite useless. But while he took no apparent notice of what passed about him, his wife felt that his eyes dwelt upon her and followed her when she was in range, and only that morning he had feebly retained the hand she had laid within his upturned left palm. Recovery to a certain extent was possible, the physician proclaimed, with no further jars, and care and quietness; but how to secure this? Quiet is not always the inexpensive thing it seems. But with this new-born hope, everything else seemed unimportant to her.

The apparent worst had been carefully explained to them and accepted several days ago, but there had been yet more, for when Brooke had that morning gone to the safety box, where some jewels of her mother’s,—a necklace and other things seldom worn,—and some dozen railroad bonds, the little property that came to her from the Brookes, with some shares of an industrial stock, a birthday gift to Brooke at twenty-one, were stored, the box was empty!

Thoughts would come that must not find words even between themselves as they sat there. They both believed in Adam Lawton’s honour and that if he could speak he would explain; and finally, as the tension tightened into agony, Brooke went over to her mother, and kneeling by her said, “Don’t try to think it out now, mother; some day we shall know, and now it is how to live and work until that day comes.”

As for Brooke, she had lived five years in those few weeks. Every word that she had ever heard of criticism of those in their present position came back to her, the cruel discussion of Julia Garth at the musicale topping the list.

All the various suggestions, practical and problematical, for their future arrayed themselves mockingly in a row before her, but one and all they had their beginning in the separation of the family; not a single plan offered the remotest possibility of keeping it together.

That morning, after her finding of the empty box, Brooke had seen Mr. Dean in his office and learned definitely that the only income they could count upon after the new year was the interest upon her shares of stock, six hundred dollars a year—fifty dollars a month; for though the shares themselves were missing, as they stood in her name upon the company’s books, the interest would keep on. Besides this, there would be a fund gathered here and there from articles she or her mother personally owned beyond question—a scant two thousand dollars.

One asset had been overlooked until that interview, the homestead at Gilead, Brooke’s own property, asked for in a moment of sentiment and freely given her. Mr. Dean, knowing the place and location well, thought that, with good management, it might be sold at the right season for perhaps six or eight thousand dollars.

All these circumstances were pushed into Brooke’s brain, jostling and crowding each other until it seemed hopeless to think. Even Lucy Dean, huffed because Brooke would not come to her for the rest of the winter or borrow money of her father to establish a little apartment where she could work at her painting, though she came as regularly as ever, had ceased to question or even offer cheer. And it seemed almost impossible for Brooke to tell her mother, in the face of hope, that Mr. Dean’s plan of sending Adam Lawton to the sanatorium in the country seemed the only feasible solution at the present moment. As for her mother and herself, she would work for both, but not in anything obtained merely by the insecure path of social influence. It would be teaching drawing, of course, for too well she realized Lorenz’ words that as a painter of pictures she had not yet “awakened,” and in the world of competition the winners of a single prize or the acclaim won in charity bazaars is a damning introduction.

The entrance of some one brought Brooke to herself, a shrill voice that replied in a high key to the answer of the maid, “In the den? Then we’ll go right in very informally, no need to take the cards,” and Mrs. Ashton, followed by a married daughter, entered quite abruptly, the elder lady looking at the two women with something akin to disapproval on her florid face, an expression that Brooke interpreted instantly. Mrs. Ashton was becoming bored at the situation and had a feeling of resentment that all her opportunities of becoming the patroness of the Lawtons were vanishing.

She still had one more card to play, a trump she considered it, and she suddenly drew it from the pack and cast it before Mrs. Lawton. A widower, more than passing rich, though not of her precise set, with two daughters just leaving school, had intrusted her to find a well-bred New Yorker as chaperon and companion to travel with them until the next autumn, and then launch them tactfully in the Whirlpool. Any reasonable salary might be demanded—would dear Pamela like the chance? Six or eight months abroad would doubtless restore her tone and spirits.

Brooke’s eyes flashed fire, Scotch fire not easily put out when once it was kindled; but Mrs. Lawton only grew a shade more pale, and said in her soft, slow accent, looking steadily at her friend, “Susan, you are forgetting Adam. How could I both go abroad and give him the care he will always need while he lives?”

For some reason the soft answer not only did not turn away wrath, but augmented it, and shortly the couple left; but alas for the treachery of portiÈres—scarcely were the pair in the hall when, forgetting that it was not a door that closed behind them, Mrs. Ashton said, in an echoing whisper, “Care, while he lives indeed—it’s just as I said the other day, if Adam Lawton had only died at once and had done with it, those women, instead of being beggars, could have lived in luxury on his life insurance!”

With the harsh, insistent vibration of a graphophone, the words stung the ears of mother and daughter, who were standing where their guests had left them. A look of horror froze Mrs. Lawton’s face to the immobility of a statue, while in Brooke’s brain, still tingling with the other blow, the thoughts were suddenly clarified as if by fire, and she never noticed that the Cub had come in and was looking from one to the other in alarm.

“It is monstrous!” she choked out, clasping her mother in her strong arms. “Oh, mother, mother! do not look so, as if you were turning to stone! You shall not be torn from father; we will go together and keep together! Listen, you and he desired me and brought me into your world for love, and took the responsibility of me when I was helpless; now you shall come into mine and be my children, and I will bear the responsibility for that same love. Father needs country quiet; so be it; we will take him home to Gilead. It is my home, my very own in deed and truth, given so long ago that no creditor can grumble. I never have lived in the country, and I know nothing, you may say. What I do not know I can learn. At worst, with what I have we can be secure somehow for a year. Cousin Keith has lived and worked there, so can I, and if only Adam will stand by me, I cannot fail. But you must trust me like a child, as I did you, and do not question.”

A look of wondrous joy crept into the mother’s eyes, but with it her strength gave way, and when she tottered and would have fallen, it was Adam who caught her, and as he held her with tender awkwardness, nodding at his sister as if in answer to her appeal, he jerked out, “You bet your life, Sis, I’ll stand by the crowd, and won’t it just suit Pam and me to get out of town!”