ve not been able to tell you
in advance that I couldn't take tea with you. But Mr. Ellison has
taken me away rather suddenly. He had to go to Canada to take a
position. We hope we will see you when we get back."

She did not know till much later that owing to the thank-you-ma'am
which they reached simultaneously with the word "suddenly" that when
Mr. Logan got that note he thought it was "severely," and that the bad
penmanship and generally disgraceful appearance of the loose-leaf
sheet, the jerky hand, and the rather elderly envelope which was all
Francis could find--it had been living in a pocket with many other
things for some time--gave him a wrong idea. Mr. Logan, to anticipate
a little, by this erroneous means, acquired an idea very near the
truth. He thought that Marjorie Ellison was being kidnapped against
her will, and made it the subject of much meditation. His nervous
ailment prevented him from dashing after her.

Marjorie fortunately knew nothing of all this, for she was proud to the
core, and she would rather have died than let any one but Lucille, of
necessity in on it, know anything but that she was spending the most
delightful and willing of honeymoons.

So when they found a little up-state town with a tavern of exceeding
age and stiffness, and alighted in search of luncheon, the landlord and
landlady thought just what Marjorie wanted them to think; that all was
well and very recent.

She sank into one of the enormous walnut chairs, covered with
immaculate and flaring tidies which reminded her of Cousin Anna and
stuck into the back of her neck, and viewed the prospect with pleasure.
For the moment she almost forgot Francis, and the problem of managing
just the proper distance from him. There was a stuffed fish,
glassy-eyed and with cotton showing from parts of him, over the
counter. There were bills of forgotten railroads framed and hung in
different places. There was a crayon portrait of a graduated row of
children from the seventies hung over the fireplace, four of them, on
the order of another picture, framed and hanging in another part of the
room, and called "A Yard of Kittens." Marjorie wondered with pleasure
why they hadn't added enough children to bring it up to a yard, and
balanced things properly. The fireplace itself was bricked up, all
except a small place where a Franklin stove sat, with immortelles
sticking out of its top as if they aimed at being fuel. Marjorie had
seen im