r.
Schmidt, I want to complain about the man who dished up the ice-cream at
my last reception. I am going to give another one next week, and I want
a different--"

"I won't be back to lunch," said her husband. The door slammed.

As he turned into the front walk it opened after him, and his wife
called after him, "I'm going to give a dinner party for Lydia's girl
friends here this evening, so you'd better get your dinner down-town or
at the Meltons'. I'll telephone Julia that--"

The Judge stopped, disappointment, almost dismay, on his face. "I'm
going to keep track from now on," he called angrily, "of just how often
I catch a glimpse of Lydia. I bet it won't be five minutes a week."

Mrs. Emery evidently did not catch what he said, and as evidently
considered it of no consequence that she did not. She nodded
indifferently and, drawing in her head, shut the door.

At the end of the next week the Judge announced that he had put down
every time he and Lydia had been in a room together, and it amounted to
just forty-five minutes, all told. Lydia, a dazzling vision in white and
gold, had come downstairs on her way to a dance, and because Paul, who
was to be her escort, was a little late, she told her father that now
was his time for a "visit." This question of "visiting" had grown to be
quite a joke. Judge Emery clutched eagerly at anything in the nature of
an understanding or common interest between them.

"Oh, I don't know you well enough to visit with you," he now said
laughingly, "but I'll look at you long enough so I'll recognize you the
next time I meet you on the street-car."

Lydia sat down on his knee, lightly, so as not to crumple her gauzy
draperies, and looked at her father with the whimsical expression that
became her face so well. "I'm paying you back," she said gayly. "I
remember when I was a little girl I used to wonder why you came all the
way out here to eat your meals. It seemed so much easier for you to get
them near your office. Honest, I did."

"Ah, that was when I was still struggling to get my toes into a crack in
the wall and climb up. I didn't have time for you then. And you're very
ungrateful to bring it up against me, for all I was doing was to wear my
nose clear off on the grindstone so's to be able to buy you such pretty
trash as this." He stroked the girl's shimmering draperies, not thinking
of what he was saying, smiling at her, delighted with her beauty, with
her nearness to him, wit