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time as her father would consent to announce that he was about to lose her. Thus Elizabeth found her engagement full of unexpected turns and twists, and nothing precisely as she had expected. But she accepted things as they came, being of the type around which the dramas of life are enacted, while remaining totally undramatic herself. She lived her quiet days, worried about Jim on occasion, hemmed table napkins for her linen chest, and slept at night with her ring on her finger and a sense of being wrapped in protecting love that was no longer limited to the white Wheeler house, but now extended two blocks away and around the corner to a shabby old brick building in a more or less shabby yard. They were very gay in the old brick house that night before the departure, very noisy over the fish and David's broiled lamb chop. Dick demanded a bottle of Lucy's home-made wine, and even David got a little of it. They toasted the seashore, and the departed nurse, and David quoted Robert Burns at some length and in a horrible Scotch accent. Then Dick had a trick by which one read the date on one of three pennies while he was not looking, and he could tell without failing which one it was. It was most mysterious. And after dinner Dick took her into his laboratory, and while she squinted one eye and looked into the finder of his microscope he kissed the white nape of her neck. When they left the laboratory there were patients in the waiting-room, but he held her in his arms in the office for a moment or two, very quietly, and because the door was thin they made a sort of game of it, and pretended she was a patient. "How did you sleep last night?" he said, in a highly professional and very distinct voice. Then he kissed her. "Very badly, doctor," she said, also very clearly, and whispered, "I lay awake and thought about you, dear." "I'd better give you this sleeping powder." Oh, frightfully professional, but the powder turned out to be another kiss. It was a wonderful game. When she slipped out into the hall she had to stop and smooth her hair, before she went to Lucy's tidy sitting-room. XXI It was Jim Wheeler's turn to take up the shuttle. A girl met in some casual fashion; his own youth and the urge of it, perhaps the unconscious family indulgence of an only son--and Jim wove his bit and passed on. There had been mild contention in the Wheeler family during all the spring. Looking out from his quiet w
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