"Charlie goes to college this next fall. I think there is little or no doubt of his getting in. He did very well with his preliminaries last June. He is very bright, I think, but I sometimes tremble to think of all that lies before him. Do you realize, Fox, that Sally is almost twenty-one and that it is ten years--almost ten years--since that terrible time when--" The letter broke off here. That last sentence must have started Mrs. Ladue upon her gazing out of the window. Sally looked up soberly. "I'll add my request to yours, if you like," she remarked; "but it's hardly likely that Fox will come just because we ask him--in the middle of winter. He must be very busy. But I hope he'll come. I should dearly like to see him--and Henrietta, of course--" She interrupted herself. "Have you spoken to Patty about Fox, mother?" she asked,--"about his coming here?" Her mother smiled whimsically. "Not exactly to Patty," she replied. "I spoke to Uncle John." "That is the same thing, in effect," said Sally, chuckling. "Much the same thing, but speaking to Patty might save her self-respect." "I thought," Mrs. Ladue suggested gently, "that if the idea seemed to come from Uncle John it would do that. It is a little difficult to convince Patty and--and I didn't like to seem to press the matter." Sally bent forward and kissed her. "I beg your pardon," she said. "No doubt you are right." She took the pen and wrote a few lines in her firm, clear hand. Then she tossed the letter into her mother's lap and sat silent, gazing out of the window, in her turn, at the old, familiar wall and at the snow beyond. "Mother," she asked suddenly, "what would you do--what would you like to do if father should happen to turn up?" Her mother was startled out of her usual calm. Her hand went up instinctively to her heart and she flushed and grew pale again and she looked frightened. "Why, Sally," she said. She seemed to have trouble with her breathing. "Why, Sally, he hasn't--you don't mean--" Apparently she could not go on. "No, no," Sally assured her hastily, "he hasn't. At least, he hasn't that I know of." "Oh." It was evidently a great relief to Mrs. Ladue to know that he hadn't. The tears gathered in her eyes and dropped slowly upon the open letter in her hand as she spoke. "I--thought--I thought that--that--perhaps--" Sally understood. "Oh, mother, dear, I only wanted to know what you would do--what you would want to do. The thought occurred to me suddenly. I don't know why." "I don't know, Sally. I don't know. I suppose we ought to go back to him. But I don't know."