his hat in a wide circle that included the Rectory.

Pride made Ikey forget his woe. "Oh," he boasted, "I can go venefer I
like. You see, my aunt, she only borrows me here."

"Ah! And what do you think of my proposition?"

Ikey meditated. "Vell, I ain't crazy to stay here mit Momsey gone."

Balcome put a hand on his shoulder. "I thought you wouldn't. So
suppose we talk this over--eh?--man to man--while we hunt the
choirmaster?"

CHAPTER XII

When they were gone, Sue looked down at the check in her hand.
Yesterday, in the heat of a just resentment, she had boasted a new
freedom. What had come of it was twelve hours without the presence of
her mother--twelve hours shared with Hattie and Farvel.

They had been happy hours, for strangely enough Hattie had needed
little cheering. It was Farvel who easily accomplished wonders with
her. Sue did not know what passed between the clergyman and the
bride-who-was-not-to-be during a long conference in the library. She
had heard only the low murmur of their voices. And once she had heard
Hattie laugh. When the two finally emerged, it was plain that Hattie
had been weeping, and Farvel was noticeably kind to her, even tender.
At dinner he was unwontedly cheerful, relieved at the whole solving of
the old, sad mystery, though worried not a little by Clare's
disappearance. After dinner he had taken himself out and away in a
futile search that had lasted the whole night.

But happy as Sue had been since parting with her mother at Tottie's,
nevertheless she felt strangely shaken, as if, somehow, she had been
swept from her bearings. She attributed this to the fact that never
before had she and her mother spent a night under different roofs.
Until Sue's twenty-fourth birthday, there had been the daily partings
that come with a girl's school duties. (Sue had continued through a
business college after leaving high school.) But beyond the short trip
to school and back, Mrs. Milo did not permit her daughter to go
anywhere alone, urging Sue's youth as her excuse.

They shopped together; they sat side by side in the Milo pew at St.
Giles; and after Sue's sixteenth birthday, though Wallace might have to
be left at home with his father, Mrs. Milo did not permit her daughter
to accept invitations, even to the home of a girl friend, unless she
herself was included. It was said--and in praise of Mrs. Milo--that
here was one woman who took "good care of her girl."

Wh