Robinson Crusoe for to-night at least."

"I suppose," said Noble huskily, "I suppose you'll go to some of your
aunts or brothers or cousins or something."

"No," she said. "My trunk may come up from the station almost any time,
and if I close the house they'll take it back."

"You needn't bother about that, Julia. I'll look after it."

"How?"

"I could sit on the porch till it comes," he said. "I'd tell 'em you
wanted 'em to leave it." He hesitated, painfully. "I--if you want to
lock up the house I--I could wait out on the porch with your trunk, to
see that it was safe, until you come back to-morrow morning."

She looked full at him, and he plaintively endured the examination.

"_Noble!_" Undoubtedly she had a moment's shame that any creature should
come to such a pass for her sake. "What crazy nonsense!" she said; and
sat upon a stool before the crackling fire. "Do sit down, Noble--unless
your dinner will be waiting for you at home?"

"No," he murmured. "They never wait for me. Don't you want me to look
after your trunk?"

"Not by sitting all night with it on the porch!" she said. "I'm going to
stay here myself. I'm not going out; I don't want to see any of the
family to-night."

"I thought you said you were hungry?"

"I am; but there's enough in the pantry. I looked."

"Well, if you don't want to see any of 'em," he suggested, "and they
know your father's away and think the house is empty, they're liable to
notice the lights and come in, and then you'd have to see 'em."

"No, you can't see the lights of this room from the street, and I lit
the lamp at the other end of the hall. The light near the front door,"
Julia added, "I put out."

"You did?"

"I can't see any of 'em to-night," she said resolutely. "Besides, I want
to find out what you meant by what you said in the taxicab before I do
anything else."

"What I meant in the taxicab?" he echoed. "Oh, Julia! Julia!"

She frowned, first at the fire, then, turning her head, at Noble. "You
seem to feel reproachful about something," she observed.

"No, I don't. I don't feel reproachful, Julia. I don't know what I feel,
but I don't feel reproachful."

She smiled faintly. "Don't you? Well, there's something perhaps you do
feel, and that's hungry. Will you stay to dinner with me--if I go and
get it?"

"What?"

"You can have dinner with me--if you want to? You can stay till ten
o'clock--if you want to? Wait!" she said, and jumped up and ran out of