n of the idea of bread."

A small boy was coming down the street toward them as she spoke,
from the bake-shop door; a brick loaf sticking out at the two ends
of an insufficient wrap of yellow brown paper under his arm.

As Ray glanced on beyond him, she caught sight of that which put
the brick loaf, and their talk, instantly out of her mind. The
doctor's chaise,--the horse fastened by the well-known strap and
weight,--was standing before the house. She quickened her steps,
without speaking.

"I say," called out the urchin at the same moment, looking up at her
as he passed by with a queer expression of mixed curiosity and
knowing eagerness,--"Yer know yer father's sick? Fit--or sunthin'!"

But Ray made no sign--to anybody. She had already hurried in toward
the side door, through the yard, under the elm.

A neighborly looking woman--such a woman as always "steps in" on an
emergency--met her at the entrance. "He's dreadful sick, I'm afraid,
dear," she said, reaching out and putting her hand on Ray's
shoulder. "The doctor's up-stairs; ben there an hour. And I believe
my soul every identical child in the village's ben sent in for a
brick loaf."

Marion and Sunderline kept on down the Underhill road. The
conversation was broken off. It was a startling occurrence that had
interrupted it; but it does not need startling occurrences to turn
aside the chance of talk just when one would have said something
that one was most anxious to say. A very little straw will do it. It
is like a game at croquet. The ball you want to hit lies close; but
it is not quite your turn; a play intervenes; and before you can be
allowed your strike the whole attitude and aspect are changed.
Nothing lies where it did a minute before. You yourself are driven
off, and forced into different combinations.

Marion wanted to try Sunderline with certain new notions--certain
half-purposes of her own, in the latter part of this walk they would
have together. Everything had led nicely up to it; when here, just
at the moment of her opportunity, it became impossible to go on from
where they were. An event had thrust itself in. It was not seemly to
disregard it. They could not help thinking of the Ingrahams. And
yet, "if it would have done," Marion Kent could have put off her
sympathies, made her own little point, and then gone back to the
sympathies again, just as really and truly, ten minutes afterward.
They would have kept. Why are things jostled up so?