“Mother, do you know I think that if only Cousin Keith were not going away, it would be a fine thing to send the Cub to Gilead for a while, until he pulled himself together, and then some not overzealous tutor with a fondness for walking might be found for him. “What is it?” asked Brooke, reading the confusion in her mother’s face. “You have answered him already and told him that he may come? Good! now we will act together. You take father quite too seriously; if he really understood just what we both wish to do and be, I’m sure that he would be the last one to hinder either, but we haven’t let him see. How can a man who has lived his own life so long possibly understand women unless they give him the clew, and whisper ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ when he gets off the track? “No one, since ever I can remember, has been allowed to let father even think that he can make a mistake; consequently he really believes he cannot err, and I don’t think that he is wholly to blame for it. I’m going to beg for the Cub’s liberty the minute father comes home, and more than that, I’m going to tell him that we four have been groping round in opposite directions, and that he simply must come into our lives, and let us do for him, or take us into his—that the ‘some day’ when he will have time to listen must begin this very night!” “Dinner is served!” said the reproving accents of the waiting-maid, letting drop the portière as she spoke, and both women glanced in surprise at the clock that was striking eight. “Eight o’clock already, and I’m in my street gown,” said Brooke, gathering up her possessions, and making sure that the silk-bound catalogue was in her muff. “Eight o’clock, and your father has not yet come home!” “Perhaps he has stopped at the club, and talked longer than usual. I heard to-day through Lucy, to whom her father seems to speak as freely about his business as if she were his partner, that our parents are engaged in some important ‘deal’ together! “He is probably late for our special benefit,” said Brooke, cheerfully, “so that we may make ourselves just a wee bit pretty,” and putting her arm about her mother, she led her down the corridor to their rooms, which adjoined, and five minutes sufficed for each to slip on the tasteful, yet simple, dinner gown that the lady’s-maid, now at her post, had laid in readiness. “Ask the page in the outer hall if any note has come for mother,” said Brooke to the woman, as they went to the dining room. “It was only yesterday that I found that two personal notes had been travelling up and down in the elevator for half the morning, in spite of two men at the door, and one posted every ten feet the rest of the way.”