It was not that she considered the repairs upon her house, which amounted almost to rebuilding, as properly any business of Dick's. But, unaccountably and inscrutably to Patty, if not to her friends and acquaintances, her father had given Richard Torrington great discretion, under his will. The Richard aforesaid was even empowered to keep the management of all Patty's property and to give her no more than a stated allowance, if he saw good reason to do so. Mr. Hazen had made him virtually a trustee, perhaps actually; but, so far, he seemed to regard himself as no more than the channel through which Patty's money must necessarily flow and he honored all her requests, asking only that she tell him the general purpose to which the money was to be applied. In consequence of this situation, there had been certain checks signed by Richard Torrington, Executor, designed to be applied to payments upon the house. Several of these checks had been hypothecated by Patty and diverted to other uses. Possibly Charlie Ladue could have given some information as to those uses. Certainly Patty could not. She knew nothing at all of the ultimate purposes to which her money was put. For that matter, Charlie's knowledge went only one step farther. He was nothing but a channel through which Patty's money necessarily flowed. A good, generous sewer-pipe would have served as well, for all the good that the money did him; and the process was rapidly undermining Patty's morals. It was a great pity that Patty had chosen this method of supply. As long as she was bound to keep Charlie supplied with whatever he asked for, or as nearly as she could come to that, it would have been much better to ask Dick to double her allowance for her personal use. He might have wondered at such a request, but he would have done it without question, and thereby Patty's self-respect would have been saved without producing any effect upon Charlie's in either way. One wonders whether Charlie had any shreds of self-respect left, anyway. So it is difficult to say whether Patty looked forward with greater joy than dread to Charlie's coming home for the Easter recess. For some weeks he had kept her stirred up by his requests, but these requests were for relatively small sums, ten dollars or twenty-five, and once he asked for fifty. But for ten days before his vacation, he had asked her for nothing, and her fears were forgotten. When, at last, the Easter recess began, Charlie appeared promptly on the afternoon when he should have appeared and he looked neither forlorn nor seedy. To a careful eye, a loving eye, watching him for some days, he might have seemed to be possessed of an anxiety which he took pains to conceal; but it was an elusive thing and, if he chose to deny its existence, how was one to prove it? Sally thought that she detected something, she could not tell just what, and she asked her mother, casually, whether she had noticed anything.