Aunt Ocky. Where did you get this? Has it a history?"

"Very likely, but I don't know it. It is certainly old enough to have
a lurid past. I picked it up in the bazaar at Teheran. That
inscription on the blade is Persian."

"What does it mean? They taught me Persian when they taught me chess."

"It reads, 'I bring Peace!'"

"Oh. The Oriental point of view, I suppose! We would be more apt to
think of a dagger as bringing war."

"We think backwards at times," commented Miss Ocky. She reclaimed her
colorful souvenir of the East, then glanced up as the study door
opened. "Hello, Simon. I expect you will sleep easier to-night; no
fear of fire bugs in a rain like this!"

He grunted something unintelligible, and stared at Copley standing
there in the parlor in his raincoat. The young man returned the stare
with expressionless face. Neither he nor his father spoke, and in a
moment the tanner left the room.

Miss Ocky was as good as her word the following morning. She marched
cross-country to the Graham house, some half-mile distant, and had a
long and enlightening conversation with Sheila. She had met the girl
several times and approved of her highly, and when she left her finally
to return home her good opinion of Miss Graham was in nowise
diminished. The young woman, if she were not mistaken, had just the
qualities needed to make a useful citizen out of a husband like Copley
whose chief defect was clearly a lack of decision. He wanted
starching, that was it.

She bore homeward a book that she had borrowed from Sheila, and though
it only wanted twenty minutes to lunch time, she neither went to her
room to freshen up nor sought her nephew to make a hasty report on the
result of her embassy. She betook herself instead to the study, and
there was a malicious twinkle in her eye as she tapped on the closed
door. She obeyed a gruff command to enter.

Varr had made the best of his period of enforced idleness by working on
a batch of order-books that he had brought from his office. He was
busy with them now, and he looked as displeased as he was surprised by
Ocky's interruption.

"What do _you_ want?" he snapped irritably.

"I've picked up some information that I thought you'd like to hear,
Simon. How is your nerve this morning? I've just been to call on
Sheila Graham and she fairly made my blood curdle."

"Serves you right. Mine curdles when I even think of her." He
frowned. "Why did you go to