t her.

He heard Harriett downstairs and went down to speak to her about the
price the stove man offered for the kitchen range. He remembered his
mother's delight in that range as new; somehow it made him hate selling
it for this pittance.

Harriett thought, however, that they had better let it go. One couldn't
expect to get much for old things, and they didn't want it on their
hands.

They stayed there awhile in the dining-room, considering the problem of
getting out of the way various other things there was no longer any use
for. Harriett was looking at the bay window. "If the Woodburys take the
house," she said, "they won't want these shades."

"Oh, no," replied Ted, "they wouldn't be good enough for Mildred."

The Woodburys had been there the night before to look at the house; they
thought of buying it and Mildred, just recently home from Europe with
Edith Blair--they had had a hard time getting home, because of the
war--had, according to his own way of putting it, made Ted tired. She
was so fretful with her father and her ideas of how the place could
perhaps be made presentable by being all done over had seemed to Ted
"pretty airy." He'd rather strangers had the house. He heard that
Mildred was going about a lot with Bob Gearing--one of the fellows in
town who had money.

Ted pulled out his watch. "I want to get down and see Deane at his noon
office hours," he said.

Harriett turned from the window. "What have you got to see him about?"
she asked sharply.

"Why--just see him," he answered in surprise. "Why shouldn't I want to
see him? Haven't seen him since I got back. He'll want to hear about
Ruth."

Harriett seemed about to speak, then looked at the door of the kitchen,
where a man was packing dishes. "I don't think I'd go to him for
_that_," she said in lowered voice.

Ted looked at her in bewildered inquiry.

"Mrs. Franklin has left him," she said shortly. She glanced at the
kitchen door, then added in a voice that dropped still lower: "And the
talk is that it's because of Ruth."

For a minute Ted just stood staring at her. Then his face was aflame
with angry blood. "The _talk_!" he choked. "So that's the new 'talk'!
Well--"

"S--h," warned Harriett, and stepped over and closed the kitchen door.

"I'd like to tell some of them what I think of their 'talk,'" he blazed.
"Oh, I'd like to tell some of these _warts_--"

"Ted!" she admonished, nodding her head toward the closed door.

"What do I