On Wednesday Jim and I were to start for Chicago, where Mr. Pendleton would be found awaiting us. On Sunday the weather, which had been cold and snowy for weeks, changed; and it blew from the southeast, raw and chill, but thawy. All day Monday the warmth increased; and the farmers coming into town reported great ponds of water dammed up in the swales and hollows against the enormous snow-drifts. Another warm day, and these waters would break through, and the streams would go free in freshets. Tuesday dawned without a trace of frost, and still the strong warm wind blew; but now it was from the east, and as I left the carriage to enter my office I was wet by a scattering fall of rain. In a few moments, as I dictated my morning's letters, my stenographer called attention to the beating on the window of a strong and persistent downpour. Elkins, too much engrossed in his thoughts to be able to confine himself to the details of his business, came into my office, where, sometimes sitting and sometimes walking uneasily about, he seemed to get some sort of comfort from my presence. He watched the rain, as one seeing visions. "By morning," said he, "there ought to be ducks in Alderson's pond. Can't we do our chores early and get into the blind before daylight, and lay for 'em?" "I heard Canada geese honking overhead last night," said I. "What time last night?" "Two o'clock." "Well, that lets us out on the Alderson's pond project," said he; "the boys who hunted there weren't out walking at two. In those days they slept. It can't be that we're the fellows.... Why, there's Antonia, coming in through the rain!" "I wonder," said I, "if la grippe isn't taking a bad turn with her father." She came in, shedding the rain from her mackintosh like a water-fowl, radiant with health and the air of outdoors. "Gentlemen," said she gaily, "who but myself would come out in anything but a diving-suit to-day!" "It's almost an even thing," said Jim, "between a calamity, which brings you, and good fortune, which keeps you away. I hope it's only your ordinary defiance of the elements." "The fact is," said she, "that it's a very funny errand. But don't laugh at me if it's absurd, please. It's about Mr. Cornish." "Yes!" said Jim, "what of him?" "You know papa has been kept in by la grippe for a day or so," she went on, "and we haven't been allowing people to see him very much; but Mr. Cornish has been in two or three times, and every time when he went away papa was nervous and feverish. To-day, after he left, papa asked--" here she looked at Mr. Elkins, as he stood gravely regarding her, and went on with redder cheeks--"asked me some questions, which led to a long talk between us, in which I found out that he has almost persuaded papa to--to change his business connections completely." "Yes!" said Jim. "Change, how?"