th a curt good-bye,
turned out of the door. As the stout figure passed through the low
branches of the walnuts her gray eyes began to shine. Her Mystery was
nearly solved.

Dropping paste and books in a heap, she ran after him, taking a short
cut through the currant bushes, so that when he passed on the outer
side of the garden fence there she was quietly waiting, her head and
face darkly framed by a thick creeper.

"Well?" smiling down, amused, as he might to a playful kitten.

"Doctor McCall," in the queer formal fashion that was Kitty's own, "I
should be glad if you would come back this evening. Without Maria.
I have some business--that is, a plan of mine. Well, it is a certain
thing that--"

"That you wish to consult me about?" after waiting for her to finish.

"Yes, that's it," nodding energetically.

"Very well." He stood looking at her arm on the fence, and the face
resting with its chin upon it. McCall, of all men, hated a scene, and
he had an uneasy consciousness that he had just betrayed unexplained
feeling in the house, and was therefore glad to slip back to
commonplaces. Besides, Kitty was exactly the kind of woman whom all
men feel an insane desire to help at first sight. "You have a plan,
eh? and you want advice, not knowing much about business?"

There was not the least necessity for him to say this, having asked
it before. But he did it, and waited to hear Kitty say yes again, and
waited still, before he lifted his hat and said good-bye, to see the
shadow of a waving branch creep over her white chin and lose itself in
her neck. Most men would have done the same, just as they would stop
to whistle a laugh from a fat, pretty baby on the street, and then go
on, leaving it behind. The last thing in the world to consult on their
business, or to ask for help or comfort when trouble met them, or
death.

* * * * *

Miss Muller spent the whole day at the Book-house, but Doctor McCall
did not come, as she expected. As evening approached she began to
shiver, and had premonitory symptoms of clairvoyance, and went home at
last, to Kitty's relief. A slow drizzling rain set in: the damp fogs
that belong to that river-bottom walled in the house and hung flat
over the walnuts like a roof. Catharine had made her own corner of the
Book-shop snug and cheerful. The space was wide, the light soft and
bright. She placed her own chair by the table, Peter's not far from
it. She meant to