Lawson was locking his suit-case; he stopped and looked at the negro a moment, strangely. "Yes," he said, slowly, "yes, I'm going away for Christmas." The professor only knew there was another locked door on the corridor. XIX There were many other locked doors on the corridors and on East Range and West Range. The quadrangle looked deserted. Edward Montague had gone home. The friendly women in the other houses about the campus were too busied in household doings to have time for visiting. Frances was left to herself and to her house. The Christmas-tide had always been a joyful holiday for her father and for herself, a time of genuine merry-making and of real rest, when Susan's cooking provided all good things, and the professor allowed himself the luxury of lighter reading, and the two of them were free to come and go as they chose. Frances was brave enough and proud enough to leave no part of any preparation neglected; but her close-shut lips and dark-circled eyes and white cheeks smote her father as nothing else could have done. After a few brief words that bitter night there was nothing more he could say to her, and to watch her silent fight was agony. Christmas day dragged miserably. The professor, watching his daughter furtively, felt he could bear it no longer. He laid down the book Edward Montague had sent him as a holiday gift and which he had been making some pretence of reading. "Frances," he said suddenly, "how would you like to go to Washington?" Frances looked up astonished. "To Washington?" she repeated. "I have been wanting to go for a long time," her father went on hurriedly. "There are some books in the Congressional library I want, and I can get them nowhere else, some manuscripts, too. I never seem to find the opportunity to go. Suppose"--with boyish impatience, now that the topic was once broached--"suppose we go to-morrow?" There were tears in Frances' eyes she did not wish her father to see. She got up and went to the back of his chair and slipped her arms about his neck, and by and by she laid her cheek on his thick black hair where the gray showed in the waves. Neither spoke. Then the professor cleared his throat. "Suppose you run up and see about my things and yours; we can take an early train and have part of to-morrow there." He had much to say of rare books on the journey next day, but when he came back and met his friends and talked of his holiday, it was of picture galleries and concerts and fine new buildings he spoke. The listener would have guessed few hours with rare tomes, and would have guessed correctly. The professor had spent one day in the library he had been longing to visit for two years, and that he spent there because Frances declared she would go nowhere else.