rse. She sat up in bed, staring at me, and
then leaned back on the pillows again. I pretended not to notice it--but
I was sorry I'd said anything about it."

"She didn't say anything?"

"Not a word."

"Didn't you know that, before the strike, she was Ditmar's private
stenographer?"

"No!" Augusta Maturin exclaimed. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It never occurred to me to tell you," Insall replied.

"That must have something to do with it!" said Mrs. Maturin.

Insall got up and walked to the end of the terrace, gazing at a bluebird
on the edge of the lawn.

"Well, not necessarily," he said, after a while. "Did you ever find out
anything about her family?"

"Oh, yes, I met the father once, he's been out two or three times, on
Sunday, and came over here to thank me for what I'd done. The mother
doesn't come--she has some trouble, I don't know exactly what. Brooks, I
wish you could see the father, he's so typically unique--if one may use
the expression. A gatekeeper at the Chippering Mills!"

"A gatekeeper?"

"Yes, and I'm quite sure he doesn't understand to this day how he became
one, or why. He's delightfully naive on the subject of genealogy, and
I had the Bumpus family by heart before he left. That's the form his
remnant of the intellectual curiosity of his ancestors takes. He was
born in Dolton, which was settled by the original Bumpus, back in the
Plymouth Colony days, and if he were rich he'd have a library stuffed
with gritty, yellow-backed books and be a leading light in the
Historical Society. He speaks with that nicety of pronunciation of the
old New Englander, never slurring his syllables, and he has a really
fine face, the kind of face one doesn't often see nowadays. I kept
looking at it, wondering what was the matter with it, and at last
I realized what it lacked--will, desire, ambition,--it was what a
second-rate sculptor might have made of Bradford, for instance. But
there is a remnant of fire in him. Once, when he spoke of the strike, of
the foreigners, he grew quite indignant."

"He didn't tell you why his daughter had joined the strikers?" Insall
asked.

"He was just as much at sea about that as you and I are. Of course I
didn't ask him--he asked me if I knew. It's only another proof of
her amazing reticence. And I can imagine an utter absence of sympathy
between them. He accounts for her, of course; he's probably the
unconscious transmitter of qualities the Puritans possessed and tried
to