humming a music-hall
ballad cheerfully, started off into the garden. He had only gone a few
steps when his mother called to him. He stopped. She joined him
excitedly.

"Oh, Alaric! There is a way--one way that would save us." And she
trembled as she paused, as if afraid to tell him what the alternative
was.

"Is there, mater? What is it?"

"It rests with you, dear."

"Does it? Very good. I'll do it."

"Will you?"

"Honour bright, I will."

"Whatever it is?"

"To save you and Ethel and the roof, 'course I will. Now you've got me
all strung up. Let me hear it."

She drew him into a little arbour in the rose-garden out of sight and
hearing of the open windows.

"Alaric?" she asked, in a tone that suggested their fate hung on his
answer: "Alaric! Do you LIKE her?"

"Like whom?"

"Margaret! Do you?"

"Here and there. She amuses me like anything at times. She drew a map
of Europe once that I think was the most fearful and wonderful thing I
have ever seen. She said it was the way her father would like to see
Europe. She had England, Scotland and Wales in GERMANY, and the rest of
the map was IRELAND. Made me laugh like anything." And he chuckled at
the remembrance.

Suddenly Mrs. Chichester placed both of her hands on his shoulders and
with tears in her eyes exclaimed:

"Oh! my boy! Alaric! My son!"

"Hello!" cried the astonished youth. "What is it? You're not goin' to
cry, are ye?"

She was already weeping copiously as she gasped between her sobs:

"Oh! If you only COULD."

"COULD? WHAT?"

"Take that little wayward child into your life and mould her."

"Here, one moment, mater: let me get the full force of your idea. You
want ME to MOULD Margaret?"

"Yes, dear."

"Ha!" he laughed uneasily. Then said decidedly: "No, mater, no. I can
do most things, but as a moulder--oh, no. Let Ethel do it--if she'll
stay, that is."

"Alaric, my dear--I mean to take her really into your life 'to have and
to hold.'" And she looked pleadingly at him through her tear-dimmed
eyes.

"But, I don't want to hold her, mater!" reasoned her son.

"It would be the saving of her," urged the old lady. "That's all very
well, but what about me?"

"It would be the saving of us all!" she insisted significantly. But
Alaric was still obtuse. "Now, how would my holding and moulding
Margaret save us?" The old lady placed her cards deliberately, on the
table as she said sententiously: "She would stay with us here--if you
wer