egged Edith to keep her away from Margery, for that day
at least.

Fortunately, Mrs. Butler was exhausted by her journey, and retired to
her room almost immediately. I watched her slender figure go up the
stairs, and, with her black trailing gown and colorless face, she was an
embodiment of all that is lonely and helpless. Fred closed the door
behind her and stood looking at Edith and me.

"I tell you, honey," he declared, "_that_ brought into a cheerful home
is sufficient cause for divorce. Isn't it, Jack?"

"She is ill," Edith maintained valiantly. "She is my cousin, too, which
gives her some claim on me, and my guest, which gives her more."

"Lady-love," Fred said solemnly, "if you do not give me the key to the
cellarette, I shall have a chill. And let me beg this of you: if I ever
get tired of this life, and shuffle off my mortality in a lumber yard,
or a political club, and you go around like that, I shall haunt you. I
swear it."

"Shuffle off," I dared him. "I will see that Edith is cheerful and
happy."

From somewhere above, there came a sudden crash, followed by the
announcement, made by a scared housemaid, that Mrs. Butler had fainted.
Fred sniffed as Edith scurried up-stairs.

"Hipped," he said shortly. "For two cents I'd go up and give her a good
whiff of ammonia--not this aromatic stuff, but the genuine article. That
would make her sit up and take notice. Upon my word, I can't think what
possessed Edith; these spineless, soft-spoken, timid women are leeches
on one's sympathies."

But Mrs. Butler was really ill, and Margery insisted on looking after
her. It was an odd coincidence, the widow of one state treasurer and the
orphaned daughter of his successor; both men had died violent deaths,
in each case when a boiling under the political lid had threatened to
blow it off.

The boys were allowed to have their dinner with the family that evening,
in honor of Mrs. Butler's arrival, and it was a riotous meal. Margery
got back a little of her color. As I sat across from her, and watched
her expressions change, from sadness to resignation, and even gradually
to amusement at the boys' antics, I wondered just how much she knew, or
suspected, that she refused to tell me.

I remembered a woman--a client of mine--who said that whenever she sat
near a railroad track and watched an engine thundering toward her, she
tortured herself by picturing a child on the track, and wondering
whether, under such circumstan