ut
I'd be hanged before I'd write the greatest document ever penned
in--well, in the blood of one of those squirrels out yonder in the
Square!"

As he finished he turned his face toward the window, and following his
gaze, she saw the sunlight sparkling like amber wine on the rich grass
and the delicate green of the trees. As she looked back at him, she
wondered what his past could have been--how deep, how complex, how
varied was his experience of life? She was aware again of that curiously
primitive attraction which she had felt the other afternoon in the
shop. It was as if he appealed, not to the beliefs and sentiments with
which life had obscured and muffled her nature, but to some buried self
beneath the self that she and the world knew, to some ancient instinct
which was as deep as the oldest forests of earth. After all, was there a
hidden self, a buried forest within her soul which she had never
discovered?

"But Patty has not given you her message!" she exclaimed, startled and
confused by the strangeness of the sensation.

"Oh, there isn't much to tell," answered Patty, wondering if she could
ever learn, even if she practised every day, to speak and move like
Corinna. "It was only that you ought to stand by your friends."

"To stand by my friends," repeated Vetch; then he drew in his breath
with a whistling sound. "Well, I like his impudence!" he exclaimed.

Corinna rose with a laugh. "So do I," she observed, "and he seems to
possess it in abundance." Then she folded Patty in a light and fragrant
embrace. "You must be the belle of the ball," she said. "I have a genius
for being a chaperon."

When she had gone, and they watched her car pass the monument, the girl
turned back into the hall, with her hand clinging tightly to Vetch's
arm.

"Father, what do you suppose that message meant?"

"Is it obliged to mean anything?"

"Things generally do, don't they?"

Vetch smiled as he looked down at her; but his smile conveyed anxiety
rather than amusement to her observant eyes. "Oh, if things are said by
Gershom, they generally mean hell," he responded. "Perhaps I'll find
out Thursday night; there's to be a meeting then, and it looks as if
somebody might make trouble." Then he patted her shoulder. "Don't worry
about Gershom, honey," he added in the way he used to speak when she
fell and hurt herself as a child. "Don't worry your mind about Gershom.
I'll take care of him."

It was on the tip of her tongue to t