rption in you, I think. But I did mean to write, if it
will make you feel any less convinced that I'm a hardened wretch with
no natural affections. I've really never seen her, in a sense, and
writing to a person you've never seen is.... Don't look so stern,
Woman, I do write her often. I'll have you to know my daughter and I
are very good friends."

"How often?" pursued Elinor, remorselessly.

"Once or twice, or maybe three times a year. I never make a point of
counting letters with anyone. It seems so terribly small!"

Elinor shook her head helplessly. "Oh, Ross, Ross," she sighed. "Thank
heaven, there's only one of you!"

"Yes," he answered, very placidly. "Thank heaven! I was never in the
least ambitious to be a twin!"

And now it was the wife's turn to stare out at the sea and think of
Arethusa.

She was even more vexed with Ross for this dreadful neglect of his
daughter than she had shown him. Elinor had a very high ideal of
parenthood. Her own happy childhood, with a father and mother who had
included her as the third in all their pleasures and even in every day
commonplaces, as naturally as they had included themselves, had given
her no hazy picture of what a very beautiful thing such a relation
could be. She could not understand how Ross could take the idea of his
fatherhood so very indifferently. Surely he must love his child!

When Elinor loved, she gave royally of herself. If she spoiled the
objects of her affection a bit, along with this giving, it was not a
sort of spoiling that hurt. So now her heart went straight across the
miles that still separated them and found Arethusa. That she was Ross's
daughter was reason enough by itself, thought Ross's wife, to love her,
had not the story of that blue-eyed girl who had died so long ago, also
drawn Elinor's heart to the motherless baby the girl had left. And the
motherless baby was grown!

Elinor could not help wondering how Arethusa would feel about her
father's re-marriage; she was bound to have some ideas on such a
subject. It was cruel of Ross to leave her so long in ignorance. He had
been married over a month; six whole weeks in fact. He should have
written to the Farm as soon as his marriage was a settled fact. But he
would not have been Ross if he had. A slight smile flitted across
Elinor's face at this thought of the consistency of the whole
performance.

She felt as if it had devolved upon her to make all of this neglect up
to Arethusa, and