ng in common
with except the fact that you did what they said if they were fathers,
or married them when the time came, if they weren't. But she had
actually felt sorry for Francis; not sorry, in a vague, rather pitying
way because she didn't love him--but sorry for him as if he had been
Lucille, when he was so embarrassed that he walked off forgetting his
own brush. She smiled a little at the remembrance. She really began
to feel that he was a friend.

So when he tapped at her outside door presently and told her that
luncheon was ready, and that they had better go down and eat it,
instead of the severity for which Francis had braced himself, she
smiled at him in a very friendly fashion, and they went down together,
admiring the wallpaper intensely on their way, for it consisted of fat
scarlet birds sitting on concentric circles, and except for its age was
almost exactly like some that Lucille and Marjorie hadn't bought
because it was two dollars a yard.

Luncheon proved to be dinner, but they were none the less glad of it
for that. And instead of freezing every time the landlord was
tactlessly emotional, Marjorie found that she could be amused at it,
and that her being amused helped Francis to be amused.

She always looked back tenderly to that yard of kittens, and to those
other many yards of impossible and scarlet birds. They gave her the
first chance at carrying through her wild flight with Francis decently
and without too much discomfort.

The rest of the trip to Canada was easier and easier. Once admitting
that Francis and she were friends--and you can't spend three days
traveling with anybody without being a friend or an enemy--she had a
nice enough time. She kept sternly out of her mind the recollection
that he was in love with her. When she thought of that she couldn't
like him very much. But then she didn't have to think of it.

"Here we are," said Francis superfluously as they stopped at the door
of a big house that was neither a log cabin nor a regular house.

Marjorie gave a sigh of contentment.

"I admit I'm glad to get here," she said.

She slipped out of the car in the sunset, and stood drooping a minute,
waiting for her bag to be lifted down. She was beginning to feel
tired. She was lonely, too. She missed everything acutely and all at
once--New York, the little apartment, Lucille, being free from
Francis--even the black kitten seemed to her something that she could
not live one mo