ndma," he said.

"Fiend!" retorted Emma, and reread the telegram happily. She folded it
then, with a pensive sigh, "I hope she'll look like Grace. But with
Jock's eyes. They were wasted in a man. At any rate, she ought to be
a raving, tearing beauty with that father and mother."

"What about her grandmother, when it comes to looks! Yes, and think of
the brain she'll have," Buck reminded her excitedly. "Great Scott!
With a grandmother who has made the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat a
household word, and a mother who was the cleverest woman advertising
copy-writer in New York, this young lady ought to be a composite Hetty
Green, Madame de Stael, Hypatia, and Emma McChesney Buck. She'll be a
lady wizard of finance or a----"

"She'll be nothing of the kind," Emma disputed calmly. "That child
will be a throwback. The third generation generally is. With a
militant mother and a grandmother such as that child has, she'll just
naturally be a clinging vine. She'll be a reversion to type. She'll
be the kind who'll make eyes and wear pale blue and be crazy about new
embroidery-stitches. Just mark my words, T. A."

Buck had a brilliant idea.

"Why don't you pack a bag and run over to Chicago for a few days and
see this marvel of the age?"

But Emma shook her head.

"Not now, T. A. Later. Let the delicate machinery of that new
household adjust itself and begin to run smoothly and sweetly again.
Anyone who might come in now--even Jock's mother--would be only an
outsider."

So she waited very patiently and considerately. There was much to
occupy her mind that spring. Business was unexpectedly and
gratifyingly good. Then, too, one of their pet dreams was being
realized; they were to have their own house in the country, at
Westchester. Together they had pored over the plans. It was to be a
house of wide, spacious verandas, of fireplaces, of bookshelves, of
great, bright windows, and white enamel and cheerful chintz. By the
end of May it was finished, furnished, and complete. At which a
surprising thing happened; and yet, not so surprising. A demon of
restlessness seized Emma McChesney Buck. It had been a busy, happy
winter, filled with work. Now that it was finished, there came upon
Emma and Buck that unconscious and quite natural irritation which
follows a long winter spent together by two people, no matter how much
in harmony. Emma pulled herself up now and then, horrified to find a
rasping note of