had heard his voice.

She drew in a great audible breath and began to read. What a relief it
was to feel herself all one person, not two or three, probing hatefully
into each other!

* * * * *

But there was something she had not done, some teasing, unimportant
thing, she ought to finish before going on with the letter. She looked
up vacantly, half-absently, wondering what it was. Her eyes fell on
Toucle. Toucle was looking at her, Toucle who so seldom looked at
anything. She felt a momentary confusion as though surprised by another
person in a room she had thought empty. And after that, uneasiness. She
did not want Toucle to go on looking at her.

"Mark hasn't had his breakfast yet," she said to the old Indian woman.
"Won't you take him downstairs, please, and give him a dish of porridge
for me?"

CHAPTER IX

"The Gent Around the Lady

and

The Lady Round the Gent"

_An Evening in the Life of Mr. Vincent Marsh_

May 25.

"Come in, come in!" cried an old black-clad woman, with a white apron,
who opened the door wider into the flaring brilliance of the lamp-lit
kitchen. "I'm _real_ glad you felt to come to one of our dances. They're
old-fashioned, but _we_ like 'em." She closed the door behind them and
added cordially, "Now Mr. Welles is going to live here, he'll have to
learn to shake his feet along with the rest of us."

Mr. Welles was frankly terrified at the idea. "Why, I never dreamed of
dancing in all my life!" he cried. "I only came to look on." He
hesitated to divest himself of his overcoat, panic-struck and meditating
flight. Vincent fell upon him from one side and the lively old woman
from the other. Together they stripped the older man of his wraps.
"Never too late to learn," old Mrs. Powers assured him briskly. "You
dance with _me_ and I'll shove ye around, all right. There ain't a
quadrille ever danced that I couldn't do backwards with my eyes shut, as
soon as the music strikes up." She motioned them towards the door, "Step
right this way. The folks that have come are all in the settin'-room."

As they followed her, Vincent said, "Mrs. Powers, aren't you going to
dance with me, too?"

"Oh, of course I be," she answered smartly, "if you ask me."

"Then I ask you now," he urged, "for the first dance. Only I don't know
any more than Mr. Welles how to dance a quadrille. But I'm not afraid."

"I guess there ain't much ye _be_ afraid of," she said admiri