e she would never have her mother's beauty, but he
was almost equally sure that she would never need it. He studied her
closely and her actions and reactions intrigued him. He laughed, now,
and his wife turned mildly shocked eyes on him.

"Stephen, dear! Don't encourage her in being queer. I don't like her to
be queer." Mrs. Lorimer was not in the least queer herself, unless,
indeed, it was queer to be startlingly lovely and girlish and appealing
at forty-one, with a second husband and six children. She was not an
especially motherly person except in moments of reproof and then she
always spoke in a remote third person. "Honor, Mother wants you to be
more with girls." Then, as if to make it clear that she was not merely
advancing a personal whim,--"You need to be more with girls."

"Why?"

"Why--why because Mother says you do." Mrs. Lorimer did not like to
argue. She always got out of breath and warm-looking.

Her daughter dropped on the floor at her feet. Mrs. Lorimer had small,
happy-looking, lily-of-the-field hands and Honor took one of them
between her hard brown paws and squeezed it. "I know, but--_why_ do you
say so? I don't know anything about girls. Why should I, when I've had
eight boy cousins and five boy brothers and"--she gave Stephen Lorimer a
brief, friendly grin--"and two boy fathers!" Her stepfather was not
really younger than his wife but he was incurably boyish. The girl grew
earnest. "Please, _pretty-please_, let me go to L. A. High! I've counted
on it so! And"--she was as intent and free from self-consciousness as a
terrier at a rat hole--"all the boys I know are going to L. A. High! And
_Jimsy's_ going, and he'll _need_ me!"

Her stepfather laughed again and lighted a cigarette. "She has you
there, Mildred. He will need her."

"Of course he will." Honor turned a grateful face to him. "I'll have to
do all his English and Latin for him, so he can get signed up every week
and play football!"

Mrs. Lorimer did not see why her daughter's finishing need be curtailed
by young James King's athletic activities and she started in to say so
with vigor and emphasis, but her husband held up his long beautifully
modeled hand rather in the manner of a traffic policeman and stopped
her.

"Look here, Mildred," he said, "suppose you and I convene in special
session and consider this thing from all angles and then let her know
what it comes to,--shall we? Run along, Top Step!"

"All right, Stepper," said th