ome true for you, Sophy, it almost reconciles me to the pain of
parting from you; though what on earth I'm to do without you,
goodness only knows!" She was sitting on my bed, kimonoed,
slippered, and braided. And now she looked at me with a suddenly
quivering chin.

"Alicia," said I, "ever since I discovered that there's no mistake
about that lawyer's letter--that Hynds House is unaccountably, but
undoubtedly mine and I've got to live in it if I want to keep it--it
has been borne in upon me that you are just about the worst
file-clerk on earth. You're a navy-blue failure in a business
office. Business isn't your _motif_. Now, will you resign the job
you fill execrably, and accept one you can fill beyond all
praise--come South with me, share half-and-half whatever comes, and
help make that old house a happy home for us both?"

"Don't joke." Her lips went white. "Please, please, Sophy dear,
don't joke like that! I--well, I just couldn't bear it."

"I never joke," I said indignantly. "You little goose, did you
imagine for one minute that I contemplated leaving you here by
yourself, any more than I contemplate going down there by myself, if
I can help it? Stop to think for a moment, Alicia. You have been
like a little sister to me, ever since you were born. And--I'm
alone, except for you--and not in my first youth--and not
beautiful--and not gifted."

At that she hurled herself off my bed and cried upon my shoulder,
with her slim arms around my neck. Those young arms were beginning
to make me feel wistful. If things had been different--if I had been
lovely like the Scarletts, instead of looking like the Smiths--there
might have been--

Well, I don't look like the Scarletts; so there wasn't. The best I
could do was to drop a kiss on Alicia's forehead, where the bright
young hair begins to break into curls.

And that is how, neither of us having the faintest notion of what
was in store for us, Alicia Gaines and I turned our backs upon New
York and set our faces toward Hynds House.

CHAPTER II

AND ARIEL MAKES MUSIC

We had wired Judge Gatchell when to expect us, but the venerable
negro hackman who was on the lookout for us explained that the judge
had a "misery in the laigs" which confined him to his room, and that
he advised us to go to the hotel for a while.

We couldn't, for wasn't our own house waiting for us? A minute later
we had bundled into the ancient hack and were bumping and splashing
through