wed head, and held his
claw hand behind him in his flinty, red-haired hand.

"Where has he been?" asked Kenyon, as he peered through the open
curtain, with his arm about the girl.

"I don't know. The Mortons aren't at home this afternoon; they all went
out in the Captain's big car," answered the girl.

"Well,--I wonder--" mused the youth.

Lila snatched the window curtain, and closing it, whispered:
"Quick--quick--we don't care--quick--they may come in when he gets on
the porch."

Through a thin slit in the closed curtains they watched the gaunt figure
climb the veranda steps and they heard the elders ask:

"Well?" and the younger man replied, "Nothing--nothing--" he repeated,
"but heartbreak."

Then he added as he walked to the half-open door, "Doctor--it seems to
me that I should go to Laura now; to Laura and her mother."

"Yes," returned the Doctor, "I suppose that is the thing to do."

Grant's hand was on the door screen, and the Doctor's eyes grew bright
with emotion, as he called:

"You're a trump, boy."

The two old men looked at each other mutely and watched the door closing
after him. Inside, Grant said: "Lila--ask your mother and grandmother if
they can come to the Doctor's little office--I want to speak to them."
After the girl had gone, Grant stood by Kenyon, with his arm about the
young man, looking down at him tenderly. When he heard the women
stirring above on the stairs, Grant patted Kenyon's shoulder, while the
man's face twitched and the muscles of his hard jaw worked as though he
were chewing a bitter cud.

The three, Grant and the mother and the mother's mother, left the lovers
in such awe as love may hold in the midst of its rapture, and when the
office door had closed, and the women were seated, Grant Adams, who
stood holding to a chair back, spoke:

"It's about Kenyon. And I don't know, perhaps I should have spoken
sooner. But I must speak now."

The two women gazed inquiringly at him with sympathetic faces. He was
deeply embarrassed, and his embarrassment seemed to accentuate a kind of
caste difference between them.

"Yes, Grant," said Mrs. Nesbit, "of course, we know about Lila and
Kenyon. Nothing in the world could please us more than to see them happy
together."

"I know, ma'am," returned Grant, twirling his chair nervously. "That's
just the trouble. Maybe they can't be happy together."

"Why, Grant," exclaimed Laura, "what's to hinder?"

"Stuff!" sniffed Mrs. Nesbit.