ant her to live with us?" Dick asked with a gulp.

"No, I don't!" Lena answered so sharply that Dick started in surprise,
and she gathered herself together.

"It would take a long time for me to explain things to you," she went on
in gentler accents. "But, Dick, mother and I are not very happy
together. I'll tell you all about it some time. Perhaps she would be
just as contented to live somewhere else."

"Very well," said Dick with a sense of relief. "We must make her
comfortable, of course." In reality nobody else's comfort made a rap's
difference just then. "I dare say we can find some jolly little
apartment and somebody to take care of her."

"Hire somebody for her to find fault with," said Lena, with a return of
acid. "What about your mother?"

"Oh, I couldn't let mother live anywhere but in the dear old home. It's
too big and lonely for her by herself, so we must share it with her. And
no other place would ever have the flavor of home, either to her or to
me."

Lena stopped short in her progress.

"Does the house belong to you or to her?"

"Technically to me, I believe--not that it makes the slightest
difference, dear."

"Then I should be mistress of it, not she?"

"I'm sure she'd be only too glad to turn the housekeeping cares over to
your pretty little hands," said Dick, smiling, but a little uneasily.
"She's a good deal of an invalid, you know. But there's plenty of time
to think of all these details. I suppose you've had to worry about the
little things until it's become a habit," he added in a kind of apology
to himself.

"I've been a bond-slave so long," said Lena, "that I'd like to feel
perfectly free and mistress of everything around me." She straightened
her back and squared her soft shoulders.

"So you shall be!" answered Dick happily. "Even of your husband."

"Oh, that, of course," said Lena with an enchanting pout. "Now here we
are, and it's very late. You must go. Good night."

"Good night," said Dick. "I suppose I must not keep you. To think I have
the unbelievable good fortune to kiss you good night, sweetheart."

Mrs. Quincy turned over in the lumpy bed which she and her daughter
shared and said, with a querulousness undiminished by her sleepiness,
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Lena Quincy, gallivanting around
at this hour of night. It ain't decent. But there!"

"I guess I know my business," Lena snapped.

She turned out the gas to undress in the dark rather than encoura