."

In the midst of the animated talk came Annie, the parlormaid--and Cally
started at the sound of the approaching feet, and hated herself for
it--to say that Dr. Vivian was wanted at the telephone. The doctor
seemed annoyed by the summons, though not surprised; he had had to take
the liberty, he explained as he rose, of leaving word at his office
where he could be found, in case of necessity--words of this sort being
left, as we know, with his paid assistant, Mrs. Garland, the world's
biggest office-boy.

So V. Vivian was led away by Annie to the downstairs telephone in the
butler's pantry; whence he was back in a moment, looking relieved, and
assuring Miss Heth that it was nothing in the least urgent or important.
There was no hurry at all, it seemed. But Cally felt that the business
talk was drawing to a close, with a good deal still left unsaid....

Returning with eager interest to his drawing, Mr. V.V. fell to planting
shade-trees of the best quality all down the Seventeenth Street side of
the new building. So engaged, he observed suddenly:

"Don't worry any more about those floors, please--will you? That's all
going to work out very nicely.... I'll get a figure from Jem Noonan
right away on that plan of yours. And I'll see that it's a low figure,
too,--it's got to be low!... Good heavens!" said V.V., eyeing his
drawing with a queer little introspective smile. "We can't be expected
to spend anything much on a building that's going to come down in a
couple of months, you know."

She looked, smiling a little, too, at his unconscious face, fine, to
thinness, which had once made Mr. Pond think of a bishop who never grew
up. And her look became suddenly full of tenderness....

"I don't worry," said Cally, "now that I've got you to help me."

The man from the Dabney House spoke again:

"I was just thinking, out there at the telephone, that if there's no
further business before the house, you might feel like beginning that
long story you--you spoke of just now."

That took her by surprise. She seemed to be less and less at her ease.
But now surely had come her moment to take her courage in her hands, and
render him his due.

"I believe I ought to," said she, lightly--"a chapter or two, at least.
For I don't think you'll ever work it out for yourself.... And I'm glad
you're that way."

He made no reply, going on carefully with his arbor-day practice.

"When you said just now that this was wonderful," said Ca