"'Very well, Sally, if that will give you pleasure,' said Uncle John.

'I like to pay for your clothes, my dear, but just as you please.'

"Those are sentiments which a girl does not often hear. Have you, perhaps, said to somebody--but I won't ask. Sally's salary is enough to do much more than pay for our clothes now.

"Charlie goes to college this next fall. I think there is little or no doubt of his getting in. He did very well with his preliminaries last June. He is very bright, I think, but I sometimes tremble to think of all that lies before him. Do you realize, Fox, that Sally is almost twenty-one and that it is ten years--almost ten years--since that terrible time when--"

The letter broke off here. That last sentence must have started Mrs.

Ladue upon her gazing out of the window.

Sally looked up soberly. "I'll add my request to yours, if you like,"

she remarked; "but it's hardly likely that Fox will come just because we ask him--in the middle of winter. He must be very busy. But I hope he'll come. I should dearly like to see him--and Henrietta, of course--" She interrupted herself.

"Have you spoken to Patty about Fox, mother?" she asked,--"about his coming here?"

Her mother smiled whimsically. "Not exactly to Patty," she replied. "I spoke to Uncle John."

"That is the same thing, in effect," said Sally, chuckling. "Much the same thing, but speaking to Patty might save her self-respect."

"I thought," Mrs. Ladue suggested gently, "that if the idea seemed to come from Uncle John it would do that. It is a little difficult to convince Patty and--and I didn't like to seem to press the matter."

Sally bent forward and kissed her. "I beg your pardon," she said. "No doubt you are right."

She took the pen and wrote a few lines in her firm, clear hand. Then she tossed the letter into her mother's lap and sat silent, gazing out of the window, in her turn, at the old, familiar wall and at the snow beyond.

"Mother," she asked suddenly, "what would you do--what would you like to do if father should happen to turn up?"

Her mother was startled out of her usual calm. Her hand went up instinctively to her heart and she flushed and grew pale again and she looked frightened.

"Why, Sally," she said. She seemed to have trouble with her breathing. "Why, Sally, he hasn't--you don't mean--"

Apparently she could not go on. "No, no," Sally a.s.sured her hastily, "he hasn't. At least, he hasn't that I know of."

"Oh." It was evidently a great relief to Mrs. Ladue to know that he hadn't. The tears gathered in her eyes and dropped slowly upon the open letter in her hand as she spoke. "I--thought--I thought that--that--perhaps--"

Sally understood. "Oh, mother, dear, I only wanted to know what you would do--what you would want to do. The thought occurred to me suddenly. I don't know why."

"I don't know, Sally. I don't know. I suppose we ought to go back to him. But I don't know."

Sally laughed and her eyes were cold and hard. If Mr. Ladue had heard that laugh and seen her eyes, I think he would not ask Sally to go back to him. "Oh," she said lightly--but her voice was as hard as her eyes--"oh, there is no doubt about what I would do. I would never go back to him; never at all. You shouldn't, either, mother. So put that bugaboo out of your mind. I hope he won't ever turn up, not ever."

Mrs. Ladue laughed and her laugh was ready and cheerful enough. "Oh, Sally," she said, mildly remonstrating, "we ought not to say that. We ought not even to think it."

"We poor mortals seldom do as we ought, mother, dear," Sally replied lightly. "You needn't have that fear a single minute longer."

CHAPTER II

Much to Sally's surprise, Fox came on and he brought Henrietta.

"Doctor Sanderson's engagements cannot be very pressing," she said to him, smiling, as she gave him her hand, "to permit of his coming several hundred miles merely to see two lone women."

Now Doctor Sanderson's engagements, as it chanced, were rather pressing; and it was a fair inference from Sally's words that she was not as glad to see him as he wished and had hoped. But her smile belied her words.

"Miss Ladue forgets, perhaps," he replied, bowing rather formally, "that most of our patients are women, lone or otherwise, and that it is all in the way of business to travel several hundred miles to see them--and to charge for it. Although there are not many that I would take that trouble for," he added, under his breath. "So look out, Sally," he concluded gayly, "and wait until our bill comes in."

That sobered Sally. "Oh, Fox," she said, "we owe you enough already."

Which was not what he had bargained for. Sally was looking at him thoughtfully and seemed to be calculating. "Perhaps," she began, "I could manage to--"

"Sally," he interrupted hastily--he seemed even fierce about it--"Sally, I'd like to shake you."

Sally laughed suddenly. "Why don't you?" she asked. "I've no doubt it would do me good."

"That's better," Fox went on, with evident satisfaction. "You seem to be coming to your senses." Sally laughed again. "That's still better.

Now, aren't you glad to see me?"

"Why, of course I am."

"Then, why didn't you say so?" he challenged. "Merely to gratify my curiosity, tell me why you didn't."

"Why didn't you?" Sally retorted, still chuckling a little.

Fox looked blank. "Didn't I? Is it possible that I omitted to state such an obvious truth?"

Sally nodded. She was looking past him. "Oh," she cried quickly, "there's Henrietta."

"Another obvious truth," he murmured, more to himself than to Sally.

"There's Henrietta."

Henrietta came quickly forward; indeed, she was running. And Sally met her. Sally was quick enough, but she seemed slow in comparison with Henrietta.

"Sally, dear!" exclaimed Henrietta, kissing her on both cheeks. "How glad I am to see you! You can't imagine." Which was a statement without warrant of fact. If there was one thing that Sally could do better than another, it was to imagine. "Come up with me and show me my room. I've an ocean of things to say to you. Fox will excuse us, I know."

"Fox will have to, I suppose," he said, "whether he wants to or not."

"You see," laughed Henrietta, "he knows his place."

"Oh, yes," Fox agreed. "I know my place."

Sally had not seen Henrietta for four or five years. Henrietta was a lively girl, small and dainty and very pretty. Her very motions were like those of a b.u.t.terfly, fluttering with no apparent aim and then alighting suddenly and with great accuracy upon the very flower whose sweetness she had meant, all along, to capture; but lightly and for a moment. The simile is Sally's, not mine, and she thought of it at the instant of greeting her; in fact, it was while Henrietta was kissing her, and she could not help wondering whether Henrietta--But there she stopped, resolutely. Such thoughts were uncharitable.

In spite of Sally's wonderings, she was captivated by Henrietta's daintiness and beauty. Sally never thought at all about her own looks, although they deserved more than a thought; for--well, one might have asked Jane Spencer or Richard Torrington, or even Fox, who had just seen her for the first time in years. Or Everett Morton might have been prevailed upon to give an opinion, although Everett's opinion would have counted for little. He would have appraised her good points as he would have appraised those of a horse or a dog; he might even have compared her with his favorite horse, Sawny,--possibly to the disadvantage of Sawny, although there is more doubt about that than there should be,--or to his last year's car. But he was driving Sawny now more than he was driving his car, for there was racing every afternoon on the Cow Path by the members of the Gentlemen's Driving Club. No, on the whole, I should not have advised going to Everett.

Sally, I say, not being vain or given to thinking about her own looks, thought Henrietta was the prettiest thing she had ever seen. So, when Henrietta issued the command which has been recorded, Sally went without a word of protest, leaving Fox and her mother standing in the back parlor beside the table with its ancient stained and cut green cloth. Fox was not looking at her, but at the doorway through which Sally had just vanished.

"Well," he said at last, turning to her, "I call that rather a cold sort of a greeting, after four years."