where she could
call to him and be cheerfully answered. Presently Electra came in, a
book, a pencil, and some slips of paper in her hand. There was intense
consideration on her brow. She had on, her grandmother thought with
discouragement, her clubwoman's face. Billy Stark, seeing her, got up
and with his cigar and his newspaper wandered away. He had some
compassion for Electra and her temperament, though not for that could he
abstain from the little observances due his engagement to Madam Fulton.
He had a way of bringing in a flower from the garden and presenting it
to the old lady with an exaggerated significance. Electra always winced,
but Madam Fulton was delighted. He called her "Florrie," prettily, and
"Florrie, dear." Again Electra shrank, and then he took the wrinkled
hand. One day Madam Fulton looked up at him with a droll mischief in her
eyes.

"I suppose it's an awful travesty, isn't it, Billy?"

"Not for me," said Billy loyally. "Can't I be in love with a woman at
the end of fifty years? I should smile."

"It's great fun," she owned. Then more than half in earnest, "Billy, do
you suppose I shall go to hell?"

This morning Electra had found something to puzzle her.

"I've been working on your book a little, grandmother," she began.

"What book? My soul and body!" The old lady saw the cover and laid down
her pen. "That's my 'Recollections.' What are you doing with that?"

"They are extremely interesting," said Electra absorbedly. She sat down
and laid her notes aside, to run over a doubtful page. "We are going to
have an inquiry meeting on it."

"We? Who?"

"The club. Everybody was deeply disappointed because you've refused to
say anything; but it occurred to us we might give an afternoon to
classifying data in it, naming people you just refer to, you know. I am
doing the Brook Farm section."

Madam Fulton sank back in her chair and looked despairingly from the
window for Billy Stark.

"I shall never," she said, "hear the last of that book!"

"Why should you wish to hear the last of it?" asked Electra. "It is a
very valuable book. It would be more so if you would only be frank about
it. But I can understand that. I told the club it was your extreme
delicacy. You simply couldn't mention names."

"No, I couldn't," murmured the old lady. "I couldn't."

"But here is something, grandmother. You must help me out here. Here
where you talk about the crazy philanthropist who had the colonization
schem