to Endbury before
her confinement, a few days after her call from Flora Burgess. It had
occurred to her that they might know something about the reporter's
family and she stopped in after her shopping to inquire.

She found her aunt and her godfather sitting in the deeply shaded, old
grape arbor in their back yard; Dr. Melton with a book, as always, Mrs.
Sandworth ungirdled and expansive, tinkling an ice-filled cup and crying
out upon the weather.

"Sit down, Lydia, for mercy's sake, and cool off. Yes; we know all about
her; she's a patient of Marius'. Have some lemonade! Isn't it fearful!
And Marius keeps reading improving books! It makes me so much hotter!
She's English, you know."

Dr. Melton looked up from his book to remark, with his usual judicial
moderation, "I could strangle that old harridan with joy. She has been
one of the most pernicious influences the women of this town have ever
had."

"Flora Burgess' mother? Why, I never heard of her in the world until the
other day."

"You can't smell sewer gas," said the doctor briefly.

Mrs. Sandworth laughed. "Marius almost killed himself last winter to
pull her through pneumonia. He worked over her night and day. Oh, Marius
is a great deal better than he talks--strangle--!"

"I'm a fool, if that's what you mean," said the doctor.

"What is the matter with Flora Burgess' mother?" asked Lydia.

"She's been a plague spot in this town for years--that
lower-middle-class old Briton, with her beastly ideas of caste--ever
since she began sending out her daughter to preach her damnable gospel
to defenseless Endbury homes."

"Marius--my _dear_!" chided Mrs. Sandworth--"The Gospel--damnable! You
forget yourself!"

The doctor did not laugh. "They're the ones," he went on, "who first
started this idiotic idea of there being a social stigma attached to
living in any but just such parts of town."

"You live in just such a part of town yourself," said Lydia.

"My good-for-nothing, pretentious, fashionable patients wouldn't come to
me if I didn't."

"Why do you have to have that kind of patients?"

Occasionally, of late, with her godfather, Lydia had displayed a
certain uncompromising directness, rather out of character with her
usual gentleness, which the doctor found very disconcerting. He was
silent now.

Mrs. Sandworth's greater simplicity saw no difficulties in the way of an
answer. "Because, Lydia, he's one of the Kentucky Meltons, and because,
as I said,