nt to join our colony,"
observed Nicholas indifferently.

"May Kingsborough long enjoy her rule," added Juliet. "I hear that she
has grown quite amiable towards the judge since she prophesied that he
would have chronic gout and he had it."

"It would be so nice of them to marry each other," suggested Carrie with
an eye for matrimonial interests. "You needn't shake your head, mamma.
Aunt Sally said the same thing to Uncle Tom."

She was standing on the hearth rug in her walking gown, slowly fastening
her gloves. Sally looked at her and laughed in her nervous way.

"Well, I confess that it did cross my mind," she admitted. "Tom, like
all men, believed Mrs. Webb to be a martyr until I convinced him that
she martyred others."

"Oh, he still believes it behind your back," said Nicholas.

Juliet turned upon him frankly. "It's a shame to destroy wifely
confidence," she protested. "Sally hasn't been married long enough to
know that the only way to convince a husband is to argue against
oneself."

Her head rested upon the cushions of her chair, and her pretty foot was
on the brass fender. There was a cordial warmth about her which turned
the simple room into home for even the casual caller. The matronly grace
of her movements evoked the memory of infancy and motherhood; to
Nicholas Burr she seemed, in her beauty and her abundance, the supreme
expression of a type--of the joyous racial mother of all men.

Her youngest child, a girl of three, that she called "baby," had come in
from a walk and was standing at her knee in white cap and cloak and
mittens, her hand clutching Juliet's dress, her solemn eyes on the
governor. He had tried to induce her to approach, but she held off and
regarded him without a smile.

"Now, now, baby," pleaded Juliet, "who fed the bunnies with you the
other day?"

"Man," responded the baby gravely.

"Who gave you nice nuts for the dear bunnies?"

"Man."

"Who carried you all round the pretty square?"

"Man."

"Who gave you that lovely picture book full of animals?"

"Man."

"Then don't you love the kind man?"

"Noth."

"Yes, you do--you've forgotten. Go and speak to him."

The child approached gravely to make a grab at his watch-chain; he
lifted her to his knee, and friendship was established. They were at
peace a moment later when a voice was heard in the hall, and the
curtains were swung back as Eugenia Webb entered, tall and glowing, her
head rising from a collar of fur. She