Camilla Lent called a little later. Ailsa was in the backyard garden, a trowel in her hand, industriously loosening the earth around the prairie roses. "Camilla," she said, looking up from where she was kneeling among the shrubs, "what was it you said this morning about Mr. Berkley being some unpleasant kind of man?" "How funny," laughed Camilla. "You asked me that twice before." "Did I? I forgot," said Mrs. Paige with a shrug; and, bending over again, became exceedingly busy with her trowel until the fire in her cheeks had cooled. "Every woman that ever saw him becomes infatuated with Phil Berkley," said Camilla cheerfully. "I was. You will be. And the worst of it is he's simply not worth it." "I--thought not." "Why did you think not?" "I don't know why." "He _can_ be fascinating," said Camilla reflectively, "but he doesn't always trouble himself to be." "Doesn't he?" said Ailsa with a strange sense of relief. Camilla hesitated, lowered her voice. "They say he is fast," she whispered. Ailsa, on her knees, turned and looked up. "Whatever that means," added Camilla, shuddering. "But all the same, every girl who sees him begins to adore him immediately until her parents make her stop." "How silly," said Ailsa in a leisurely level voice. But her heart was beating furiously, and she turned to her roses with a blind energy that threatened them root and runner. "How did you happen to think of him at all?" continued Camilla mischievously. "He called on--Mrs. Craig this afternoon." "I didn't know she knew him." "They are related--distantly--I believe----" "Oh," exclaimed Camilla. "I'm terribly sorry I spoke that way about him, dear----" "_I_ don't care what you say about him," returned Ailsa Paige fiercely, emptying some grains of sand out of one of her gloves; resolutely emptying her mind, too, of Philip Berkley. "Dear," she added gaily to Camilla, "come in and we'll have tea and gossip, English fashion. And I'll tell you about my new duties at the Home for Destitute Children--every morning from ten to twelve, my dear, in their horrid old infirmary--the poor little darlings!--and I would be there all day if I wasn't a selfish, indolent, pleasure-loving creature without an ounce of womanly feeling--Yes I am! I must be, to go about to galleries and dances and Philharmonics when there are motherless children in that infirmary, as sick for lack of love as for the hundred and one ailments distressing their tender little bodies." But over their tea and marmalade and toast she became less communicative; and once or twice the conversation betrayed an unexpected tendency to drift toward Berkley. "I haven't the slightest curiosity concerning him, dear," said Ailsa, attempting corroboration in a yawn--which indiscretion she was unable to accomplish. "Well," remarked Camilla, "the chances are that you've seen the last of him if you showed it too plainly. Men don't come back when a girl doesn't wish them to. Do they?"