mixture in their back-bones.
Her father has the reputation, in fact, of being all rock, if not quite
of the Plymouth variety. Well, I think she will need it, poor child;
that is, if any of the rumours that are beginning to float in the air
settle to the ground."

"Meaning what?" I asked, half unconsciously, and paying little heed,
for I then realized that the daily letter from father had not arrived;
and Lucy at that moment came in, lit the lamps, and began to rattle
the hair-brushes in Miss Lavinia's bedroom, which I took as a signal
for me to leave.

The door-bell rang. It was Evan; but before I met him halfway on the
stairs, he called up: "I telephoned home an hour ago, and they are all
well. The storm held over last night there. Father says it was the most
showy snow they have had for years, and he was delayed in getting his
letter to the post."

"Is that all?" I asked, as I got down far enough to rest my hands on his
shoulders.

"Yes; the wires buzzed badly and did not encourage gossip. Ah!" (this
with an effort to appear as if it was an afterthought), "I told him I
thought that you would not wait for me tomorrow, but probably go home on
the 9:30. Not that I really committed you to it if you have other plans!"

* * * * *

Martin Cortright appeared some five minutes before Horace Bradford. As it
chanced, when the latter came in the door Sylvia was on the stairs, so
that her greeting and hearty handshake were given looking down at him,
and she waited in the hall, in a perfectly unembarrassed way, as a matter
of course, while he freed himself from his heavy coat. His glance at the
tall girl, who came down from the darkness above, in her shimmering gown,
with golden daffies in her hair and on her breast, like a beam of
wholesome sunshine, was full of honest, personal admiration. If it had
been otherwise I should have been disappointed in the man's completeness.
Then, looking at them from out of the library shadows, I wondered what he
would have thought if his entry had been at the Latham home instead of at
Miss Lavinia's, how he would have passed the ordeal of Perkins, Potts,
and Parker, and if his spontaneity would have been marred by the
formality.

Perhaps he would have been oblivious. Some men have the happy gift of
not being annoyed by things that are thorns in the flesh to otherwise
quite independent women. Father, however, is always amused by flunkies,
and treats them as