ppeared in the
doorway, she at once jumped to the conclusion it was Shaw, the butler,
come to summon her into _the presence,_ and rose to follow, without too
much inner perturbation.

"Mrs. Sherman is prevented from keeping her appointment with you this
morning," descended to her from an altitude far above her own. "She
hopes you will excuse her. She has asked me to talk with you in her
stead. You are Miss Lang, I believe? I am Mrs. Sherman's brother. My
name is Ronald."

CHAPTER IX

It is hard to readjust all one's prearranged plans in the twinkling of
an eye. Claire felt as if she had received a sudden dash of cold water
square in the face. She quite gulped from the shock of it. How in the
world was she to adapt herself to this brand-new set of conditions on
such short notice--on no notice at all? How was she to be anything but
awkwardly monosyllabic?

"Sit down, please."

Obediently she sat.

"Martha--Mrs. Slawson--tells me, your father was Judge Lang of
Michigan?"

"Yes--Grand Rapids."

"You are a college graduate?"

"Wellesley."

"You have taught before?"

"I tutored a girl throughout a whole summer. Prepared her for her
college entrance exams."

"She passed creditably?"

"She wasn't conditioned in anything."

"How are you on discipline?"

"I don't know."

"You have had no experience? Never tried your hand at training a boy,
for example?"

Claire's blue-gray eyes grew suddenly audacious, and the bridge of her
short nose wrinkled up delightfully in a roguish smile.

"I trained my father. He was a dear old boy--the dearest in the world.
He used to say he had never been brought up, until I came along. He used
to say I ruled him with a rod of iron. But he was very well-behaved
before I got through with him. He was quite a model boy, really."

Glancing quickly up into the steadfast eyes that had, at first, seemed
to her so stern as to be almost forbidding, she met an expression so
mild, so full of winning kindness, that she suddenly remembered and
understood what Martha had meant when she said once: "A body wouldn't
call the queen her cousin when he looks at you like that!"

"Your father was a credit to your bringing-up, certainly. I never had
the honor of meeting Judge Lang, but I knew him by reputation. I
remember to have heard some one say of him once--'He was a judge after
Socrates' own heart. He heard courteously, he answered wisely, he
considered soberly, he decided impartiall