one home."

"You like the children very much, don't you, Polly?" Douglas was
striving for a path that might lead them to the subject that was
troubling him.

"Oh, no, I don't LIKE them, I LOVE them." She looked at him with tender
eyes.

"You're the greatest baby of all." A puzzled line came between his eyes
as he studied her more closely. "And yet, you're not such a child, are
you, Polly? You're quite grown up, almost a young lady." He looked at
her from a strange, unwelcome point of view. She was all of that as she
sat at his feet, yearning and slender and fair, at the turning of her
seventeenth year.

"I wonder how you would like to go way?" Her eyes met his in terror.
"Away to a great school," he added quickly, flinching from the very
first hurt that he had inflicted; "where there are a lot of other young
ladies."

"Is it a place where you would be?" She looked up at him anxiously. She
wondered if his "show" was about to "move on."

"I'm afraid not," Douglas answered, smiling in spite of his heavy heart.

"I wouldn't like any place without you," she said decidedly, and seemed
to consider the subject dismissed.

"But if it was for your GOOD," Douglas persisted.

"It could never be for my good to leave you."

"But just for a little while," he pleaded. How was she ever to
understand? How could he take from her the sense of security that he had
purposely taught her to feel in his house?

"Not even for a moment," Polly answered, with a decided shake of her
head.

"But you must get ahead in your studies," he argued.

She looked at him anxiously. She was beginning to be alarmed at his
persistence.

"Maybe I've been playing too many periscous games."

"Not periscous, Polly, promiscuous."

"Pro-mis-cuous," she repeated, haltingly. "What does that mean?"

"Indiscriminate." He rubbed his forehead as he saw the puzzled look on
her face. "Mixed up," he explained, more simply.

"Our game wasn't mixed up." She was thinking of the one to which the
widow had objected. "Is it promiscuous to catch somebody?"

"It depends upon whom you catch," he answered with a dry, whimsical
smile.

"Well, I don't catch anybody but the children." She looked up at him
with serious, inquiring eyes.

"Never mind, Polly. Your games aren't promiscuous." She did not hear
him. She was searching for her book.

"Is this what you are looking for?" he asked, drawing the missing
article from his pocket.

"Oh!" cried Polly, with a f