to."

She smiled very faintly at that for she knew how terrifying such a
prospect would be to him. "Whoever told Paula," she said, "she'd
eventually attribute it, I think, back to me. So I may as well, and
rather better, do it directly."

The tension slackened between them for a while after that. The talk
became casual. Wallace, it was easy to see, was enormously relieved. Mary
had been put in unreserved possession of the facts and had endured them
better than he could possibly have hoped. He began chatting about the
farm again, not now as an incubus but as a hopeful possibility. Both the
boys had real mettle in them and might be expected to buckle down and
show it. Rush would forget the disillusionment of his holiday hopes when
the necessities of the case were really brought home to him. And as for
Graham ...

Wallace broke off short there, flushed, and made a rather panicky effort
to retrieve the slip. He was in the family enough to be a part of the
Graham conspiracy. Poor Graham, distracted by her innocent inability to
make up her mind to marry him! He would be all right as soon as her
maidenly hesitations should have come to an end, and she'd made him the
happiest man in the world with the almost inevitable yes.

She had gone rather white by the end of a long silence. Finally:

"Wallace," she began in a tone so tense that he waited breathlessly for
her to go on, "do you remember I asked you once, the day I came home from
New York, if you couldn't find me a job? I know you didn't think I meant
it and I did not altogether--then. But I mean it now. I need
it--desperately.--Wallace, I can't ever marry Graham. I know I can't. And
I can't go on being dependent on father while he's dependent on Paula."

He caught at a straw. "Paula is really very fond of you," he said.

"Yes, in a way," Mary agreed; "though she sometimes has regarded me a
little dubiously. But if she ever saw me--coming between her and father,
or father turning ever so little away from her--toward me, whether it was
any of my doing or not, she'd--hate me with her whole heart. It may not
be very logical but it's true."

Then she brought him back from the digression. "Anyhow, it's on my own
account, not Paula's--nor even father's--that I want a job. Father will
feel about it, of course, as you do and so will Rush and--and the rest.
And I don't want it to hurt anybody more than necessary. I'd rather stay
here but I suppose on their account I'd better