it!"

"That new job you're looking for," suggested Hattie. "You know I resign
tomorrow."

Sue rose and struck an absurd attitude. "Behold Susan Milo, the Human
Telephone!" she announced. And to Hattie's mother, "Where is Mr.
Balcome?"

By now, Mrs. Balcome had entirely recovered her breath. "Where he is,"
she answered calmly, "or what he does, is of no importance to me." She
picked at the crepe cascade.

Sue exchanged a look with her mother. "Well--er--he'll be here?" she
ventured.

Mrs. Balcome lifted her ample shoulders. "I don't know, and I don't
care." She fell to caressing the dog.

Sue nodded understandingly to Hattie. "The Secretary of State," she
declared, "is going to have her hands full." Whereupon the two sat down
at either side of the center table, leaned their arms upon it, and gave
themselves up to paroxysms of silent laughter.

CHAPTER II

Not far away, in an upper room, two men were facing each other across a
table--the wide, heavy work-table of the Rectory "study." The "study"
was a south room, and into it the May sun poured like a warm stream, to
fade further the green of the "cartridge" paper on the walls and the
figures of the "art-square" that covered the floor, and to bring out
with cruel distinctness the quantities of dust that Dora was allowed to
disturb not more frequently than once a week. For the "study" was a
place sacred to the privacy of each succeeding clergyman. And here,
face to face, Alan Farvel and the bridegroom-to-be were ending a long,
grave conversation--a prenuptial conversation invited by the younger
man.

Wallace Milo was twenty-eight, and over-tall, so that he carried
himself with an almost apologetic drooping stoop, as if he were
conscious of his length and sought to make it less noticeable. It was
an added misfortune in his eyes that he was spare. In sharp contrast
to his sister, he was pale--a paleness accentuated by his dark hair,
which was thick, and slightly curly, and piled itself up in an
unconquerable pompadour that added to his height. Those who saw Mrs.
Milo and Sue together invariably remarked, "Isn't the devotion of
mother and daughter perfectly beautiful!" Just as surely did these
same people observe, when they saw brother and sister side by side,
"There are two children who look as if they aren't even related."

Alan Farvel, though only a dozen years the senior of Wallace, had the
look and the bearing of a man much older than