kiss you! Oh, no!"

At this, though her mother and Laura both started, a faint, odd
relief showed itself in Cora's expression. She recovered herself.

"You little liar!" she flashed, and, with a single quick look at
her mother, as of one too proud to appeal, left the room.

"Hedrick, Hedrick, Hedrick!" wailed Mrs. Madison. "And she told me
you drove her from the table last night too, right before Miss
Peirce!" Miss Peirce was the nurse, fortunately at this moment in
the sick-room.

"I _did_ hear her ask him that," he insisted, sullenly. "Don't you
believe it?"

"Certainly not!"

Burning with outrage, he also left his meal unfinished and
departed in high dignity. He passed through the kitchen, however,
on his way out of the house; but, finding an unusual politeness to
the cook nothing except its own reward, went on his way with a
bitter perception of the emptiness of the world and other places.

"Your father managed to talk more last night," said Mrs. Madison
pathetically to Laura. "He made me understand that he was fretting
about how little we'd been able to give our children; so few
advantages; it's always troubled him terribly. But sometimes I
wonder if we've done right: we've neither of us ever exercised any
discipline. We just couldn't bear to. You see, not having any
money, or the things money could buy, to give, I think we've
instinctively tried to make up for it by indulgence in other ways,
and perhaps it's been a bad thing. Not," she added hastily, "not
that you aren't all three the best children any mother and father
ever had! _He_ said so. He said the only trouble was that our
children were too good for us." She shook her head remorsefully
throughout Laura's natural reply to this; was silent a while;
then, as she rose, she said timidly, not looking at her daughter:
"Of course Hedrick didn't mean to tell an outright lie. They were
just talking, and perhaps he--perhaps he heard something that made
him think what he _did_. People are so often mistaken in what they
hear, even when they're talking right to each other, and----"

"Isn't it more likely," said Laura, gravely, "that Cora was
telling some story or incident, and that Hedrick overheard that
part of it, and thought she was speaking directly to Mr. Corliss?"

"Of course!" cried the mother with instant and buoyant relief; and
when the three ladies convened, a little later, Cora
(unquestioned) not only confirmed this explanation, but repeated
in d