For some reason the soft answer not only did not turn away wrath, but augmented it, and shortly the couple left; but alas for the treachery of portières—scarcely were the pair in the hall when, forgetting that it was not a door that closed behind them, Mrs. Ashton said, in an echoing whisper, “Care, while he lives indeed—it’s just as I said the other day, if Adam Lawton had only died at once and had done with it, those women, instead of being beggars, could have lived in luxury on his life insurance!” With the harsh, insistent vibration of a graphophone, the words stung the ears of mother and daughter, who were standing where their guests had left them. A look of horror froze Mrs. Lawton’s face to the immobility of a statue, while in Brooke’s brain, still tingling with the other blow, the thoughts were suddenly clarified as if by fire, and she never noticed that the Cub had come in and was looking from one to the other in alarm. “It is monstrous!” she choked out, clasping her mother in her strong arms. “Oh, mother, mother! do not look so, as if you were turning to stone! You shall not be torn from father; we will go together and keep together! Listen, you and he desired me and brought me into your world for love, and took the responsibility of me when I was helpless; now you shall come into mine and be my children, and I will bear the responsibility for that same love. Father needs country quiet; so be it; we will take him home to Gilead. It is my home, my very own in deed and truth, given so long ago that no creditor can grumble. I never have lived in the country, and I know nothing, you may say. What I do not know I can learn. At worst, with what I have we can be secure somehow for a year. Cousin Keith has lived and worked there, so can I, and if only Adam will stand by me, I cannot fail. But you must trust me like a child, as I did you, and do not question.” A look of wondrous joy crept into the mother’s eyes, but with it her strength gave way, and when she tottered and would have fallen, it was Adam who caught her, and as he held her with tender awkwardness, nodding at his sister as if in answer to her appeal, he jerked out, “You bet your life, Sis, I’ll stand by the crowd, and won’t it just suit Pam and me to get out of town!” CHAPTER IX THE RETURN It was the 10th of January. At Gilead winter had been a-masking all through December, and played the part of a fantastic snow-draped Columbine in the Christmas pantomime where, the North Wind being piqued to keep his distance, she was wooed by the South and West Winds alternately amid a setting of warm noons, dramatic sunsets, and moonlight nights of electric clearness, to the song of the Moosatuk’s mad racing.