here will be nobody to kill? Don't worry, dear.
The world's getting so interesting we're going to find lots of things
more fun than guns."

"Maybe," said Worth, "if I don't have a gun you'll get me an air-ship,
Aunt Kate."

"Maybe so," she laughed.

"The man that mends the boats says I'll have an air-ship before I die,
Aunt Kate."

She gave Worth a sudden little squeeze, curiously jubilant at the
possibility of his having an air-ship before he died. And she viewed the
city of sky-scrapers adoringly--tenderly--mistily. "Oh Worthie," she
whispered, "isn't it _lovely_ to be getting home?"

CHAPTER XXXVIII

She found it difficult to adjust herself to the Ann who had luncheon
with her the next day. The basis of their association had shifted and it
had been too unique for it to be a simple matter to appear unconscious
of the shifting.

She had not seen Ann since the day they said the cruel things to each
other. Wayne had thought it best that way, saying that Ann must have no
more emotional excitement. She had acquiesced the more readily as at the
time she was not courting emotional excitement for herself.

And now the Ann sitting across the table from her was not the logical
sequence of things experienced in last summer's search for Ann. She was
not the sum of her thoughts about Ann--visioning through her, not the
expression of the things Ann had opened up. It was hard, indeed, to think
of her as in any sense related to them, at all suggestive of them.

An Ann radiating life rather than sorrowing for it was an Ann she did not
know just what to do with.

And there was something disturbing in that rich glow of happiness. She
did not believe that Ann's something somewhere could be stenography. Yet
her radiance--the deep, warm quality of it--suggested nothing so much as
a something somewhere attained. It seemed to Katie rather remarkable if
the prospect of soon being able to earn her own living could make a
girl's eyes as wonderful as that.

There was no mistaking her delight in seeing Katie and Worth. And a
sense of the old relationship was there--deep and tender sense of it;
but something had gone from it, or been added to it. It was not the
all in all.

Truth was, Ann was more at home with her than she was with Ann.

After luncheon they went up to Katie's room for a little chat. Katie
talked about stenography and soon came to be conscious of that being a
vapid thing to be talking about.

"What pretty