terwards that Theodora, turning over her mail, came
upon a marked copy of the _Intermountain_.

"What in the world is this?" she said in astonishment. "I never heard of
the paper."

She opened it, and then she gasped. Upon the first page appeared a
woodcut, evidently culled from the advertising department, and beneath it
these headlines:

"Interview with Mrs. Theodora Farrington.
Alone with Her Tea-Kettle.
The Famous Young Author Works by Night.
The Inspiration of Genius by the Hob."

Theodora read it through, carefully, deliberately, down to the final
statements in regard to Browning. She wondered at first. Then the light
dawned upon her, as she came upon a carefully-turned phrase descriptive
of "the little grey dog, the constant companion of his gifted mistress,"
and she looked up.

"Cis, you wretch!" she said.

But Cicely had been watching her face and, as she watched, her own
dimples had grown deeper.

"Didn't you tell me I might?" she asked meekly.

"Yes," Theodora acknowledged; "yes, I did, and I don't know but it was
justifiable. He must have been an innocent youth, Cis; but it's not so
much worse than some of the tales told by men who have really seen me;
only--don't do it again, dear. It might make me serious trouble."

"But, after all," she said to her husband, that night; "I am not so very
sorry. They needn't make public property of us and our work. It is none
of their affair, anyway; and Cicely has only done what I have wanted to
do, and didn't quite dare. If more people had a deputy to be interviewed
for them, it might put a stop to the literary columns in a good many
minor papers."

And her husband agreed with her.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Down in Philadelphia, that fall, Phebe was having her first experience of
bitter homesickness. She had always supposed herself immune from that
dire disease, and, for some time, she had no idea what was the matter
with her. In vain she tried to trace the cause of her complaint to
malaria and to every known form of indigestion. She studied her symptoms
carefully and tried to match them up, one by one, to the symptoms
recorded in her text-books. At last, she was forced to the ignoble
conclusion that she was suffering from homesickness pure and simple,
homesickness in one of its acutest forms. Her appetite for her work
declined in proportion to her appetite for her food. She was listless,
dull, and, it must be confessed, most deplorably cross. The fact of