hing
slowly in her crippled fingers. "Maybe that's the trouble."

"What'd he come on for, then?" demanded Mrs. Torney. "Jest showing off,
is he? Or is it another woman? The only difference between men reely
seems to be that some wear baggy pants and own up to being sultans, and
others don't!" She spread her fingers inside the stocking she was
darning, and eyed it severely. "The idea of a man with a five-year-old
girl sashaying round the country this way is ridiculous, to begin with,"
said she indignantly.

"Has Ju seen him?" asked Mrs. Page.

"No, I'm pretty sure she hasn't," Mrs. Torney answered. "She acks more
like she was afraid to, than like she ackshally had. She'd be real
relieved to start fighting, but just now she's like a hen that gets its
chickens under its wings, and looks up and round and about, and don't
know whether it's a hawk or a fox or a man with a knife that's after
her!"

"I don't believe Julie hates him," said her mother. "I think she'd go
back to him, if only for Anna's sake--if it seemed best for Anna."

"For that matter, she'd go keep house for the gorilla at the Chutes if
it seemed best for Anna!" Mrs. Torney concluded sagely.

It was only a day or two later that the telephone rang, and Julia,
answering it, as she always did now, with chill foreboding in her heart,
heard Barbara's voice.

"Julie, dear, is it you? Darling, we want you right away. It's Dad,
Julie--he's terribly ill!" Barbara's voice broke. "He's terribly ill!"

"What is it?" Julia asked, tense and pale.

"Oh, we don't know!" Barbara gasped. "Julie--we--and Mother's quite
wonderful! Con's coming right away, Janey's here, and we've wired Ted."

"Barbara, is it as bad as that?"

"I'm afraid so!" And again tears choked Barbara. "Of course we don't
know. He fell, right here in the garden. Think if he'd been on the road,
Julie, or in the street. That was the first thing Mother said. Mother's
too wonderful! Richie was here, they carried him in. And he wrote Con's
and Ted's and your name on a piece of paper. We saw he was trying to say
something, and gave him the paper, and that's what he wrote! And Aunt
Sanna in New York!"

Stricken, and beginning to realize for the first time what an empty
place would be left in the Sausalito group when the kindly old doctor
was gone, Julia hastily dressed herself for the hurried trip. She must
see Jim now; there was a sort of dramatic satisfaction in the thought
that he must know the acc