point triumphantly, connecting it with the
point before by some obscure logic known only to ladies.

"Hugh, a father could not do more for Lillian Burr than the Colonel has
since poor Theodore went. The house full of flowers, calling there
himself every day and twice a day, though she won't see him; but Lillian
won't see any one. The Colonel's been ailing himself, too, but he
wouldn't put off the rally and disappoint the town. And the new library
will open this fall, and there's talk that he's giving an organ to the
church. Hugh, don't you think Theodore's death may have sobered him?
Don't you think this may be the beginning of better things? Don't you
think----"

"I think you're making a butterfly bow. I don't like them," said the
Judge, with the ingenuous smile that somehow closed a subject. She
sighed, but changed her attack.

"Turn round now. I want to brush you. Hugh, what has happened to Neil
Donovan?"

"What do you mean, happened to him?" snapped the Judge, and then added
soberly, "I don't know, Millie. I wish I did."

"An Irish boy can get just so far and no farther."

"How far, Millie?"

"Don't be flippant, Hugh. There's something strange about Neil lately.
He didn't speak three times at the table last time he came to supper
here. He looks at me as if he didn't know who I was when I speak to him
on the street sometimes. There's no life in him. He's like Charlie and
all the rest of them--giving out just when things are going his way;
that's an Irish boy every time."

"When things are going his way? When his best friend has just shot
himself?"

"I didn't refer to that, Hugh," said Mrs. Saxon with dignity.

"No?"

"I referred to Neil's family affairs, and the fact that Colonel Everard
has taken him up."

"Maggie home and behaving herself and no questions asked, Charlie
shipped to Wells, and Neil going shooting twice with the Colonel?"

"Three times, Hugh."

"And that's what you call things going his way."

"Hugh, why should those two spend any time together at all? They hate
each other, or I always thought so--that is, if a man like the Colonel
could hate a boy like Neil. What does he want of Neil now? What does
Neil want of him?"

"They don't tell me, Millie."

"But it's queer. It frightens me, Hugh. It's as queer as----"

"What?"

"Everything," Mrs. Saxon said, goaded into an exaggeration foreign to
her placid type, "everything, lately. You refusing to preside to-night.
Lillian Burr sh