cturesque phrasing inherited from her well-read mother, that she was
more like a racing motorboat tied to a crumbling wharf in a deserted
harbor than anything else in the world.

There was a knock on her door and the sound of a bronchial cough. "Come
in," she said and darted an anxious look at the blond fat face of the
clock on the mantelshelf. She had forgotten all about the time.

It was Gleave who opened the door, Gleave the bald-headed manservant
who had grown old along with his master with the same
resentfulness--the ex-prizefighter, sailor, lumberman and adventurer
who had thrown in his lot with Cumberland Ludlow, the sportsman, when
both were in the full flush of middle age. His limp, the result of an
epoch-making fight in an Australian mining camp, was emphasized by
severe rheumatism, and the fretfulness of old age was heightened by his
shortness of breath.

He got no further than: "Your grandfather--"

"I know," said Joan. "I'm late again. And there'll be a row, I suppose.
Well, that will break the monotony, at any rate." Seizing the moment
when Gleave was wrestling with his cough, she slipped her letter into
her desk, rubbed her face vigorously with her handkerchief and made a
dart at the door. Grandfather Ludlow demanded strict punctuality and
made the house shake if it failed him. What he would have said if he
could have seen this eager, brown-haired, vivid girl, built on the slim
lines of a wood nymph, swing herself on to the banisters and slide the
whole way down the wide stairway would have been fit only for the
appreciative ears of his faithful man. As it was, Mrs. Nye, the
housekeeper, was passing through the hall, and her gasp at this
exhibition of unbecoming athletics was the least that could be expected
from one who still thought in the terms of the crinoline and had never
recovered from the habit of regarding life through the early-Victorian
end of the telescope.

Joan slipped into Mr. Cumberland Ludlow's own room, shut the door
quickly and picked her way over the great skins that were scattered
about the polished floor.

"Good morning, Grandfather," she said, and stood waiting for the storm
to break. She knew by heart the indignant remarks about the sloppiness
of the younger generation, the dire results of modern anarchy and the
universal disrespect that stamped the twentieth century, and set her
quick mind to work to frame his opening sentence.

But the old man, whose sense of humor was as