wn Main street to find Pierre
Delarue.

CHAPTER XXVI

The February sunshine lay warm and bright and still over Las Plumas
and the sky bent low and blue and cloudless above the town. Bright
feathered birds were darting through the orchards and trilling their
nesting songs, the peach tree buds were showing their pink noses, and
the promise of spring was everywhere. In the big, wide hall of Pierre
Delarue's house Marguerite stood beside the door of her room, talking
with Emerson Mead, while he clumsily buttoned her gloves. She was
dressed in a traveling gown, and as his glance wandered over her
figure his eyes shone with admiration. Tall though he was and superb
of physique, her head reached his shoulder and her figure matched his
in its own strength and beauty.

"Tom and Nick look as forlorn as two infant orphans," he was saying to
her. "You would think I had died instead of getting married. Nick has
hinted that he means to go on a spree, and Tom says he'll lock him up
in their room and sit on his chest for a week if he tries to make that
kind of a break."

"Do you think he will?" Marguerite asked.

"Sit on him? Yes, I think likely. He's done it before, and it's about
the only thing that will keep Nick sober when he has made up his mind
that he wants to get drunk. It's a good plan to keep Nick sober, too,
for when he gets drunk most anything's likely to happen."

"No, I meant, do you think he will get drunk?"

Emerson shrugged his shoulders. "I reckon that will depend on whether
Tom goes to sleep or not."

"Where are they?"

"Out on the porch with Bye-Bye."

They went out on the veranda where Tom and Nick were standing, and
Marguerite put a hand on the arm of each, looking up in their faces
with smiling earnestness. "I wonder," she said, "if I could ask you
boys to do something for me while we are gone?"

They turned toward her eagerly. "You bet we'll do anything you-all
want us to, Mrs.--Mrs.--" Nick tried to say "Mrs. Mead," choked a
little, and ended with "Mrs. Emerson." And "Mrs. Emerson" she was to
him and Tom from that time forth.

"What can we-all do?" asked Tom.

"Why, I've been hoping you wouldn't mind looking after Paul a little
bit for me. I am so afraid he will miss me, because I've always been
with him. The housekeeper will take good care of him, of course, but I
know he will be lonely if there is nothing to distract his mind. And I
couldn't be happy, even on my wedding journey, if I