His wife smiled pityingly. "She hasn't set a time for coming home, has she? Don't you know enough of Julia's ways to see she'll never in the world stand up to the music? She writes that all the family can be told, because she knows the news will leak out, here and there, in confidence, little by little, so by the time she gets home they'll all have been through their first spasms, and after that she hopes they'll just send her some forgiving flowers and greet her with manly hand-clasps--and get ready to usher at the wedding!" "Well," said Mr. Atwater, "I'm afraid you're right. It does seem rather like Julia to stay away till the first of the worst is over. I'm really sorry for some of 'em. I suppose it _will_ get whispered about, and they'll hear it; and there are some of the poor things that might take it pretty hard." "'Take it pretty hard!'" his wife echoed loudly. "There's _one_ of 'em, at least, who'll just merely lose his reason!" "Which one?" "Noble Dill." At this, the slender form of Florence underwent a spasmodic seizure in her chair, but as the fit was short and also noiseless, it passed without being noticed. "Yes," said Mr. Atwater thoughtfully. "I suppose he will." "He certainly will!" Mrs. Atwater declared. "Noble's mother told me last week that he'd got so he was just as liable to drop a fountain-pen in his coffee as a lump of sugar; and when any one speaks to him he either doesn't know it, or else jumps. When he says anything, himself, she says they can scarcely ever make out what he's talking about. He was trying enough before Julia went away; but since she's been gone Mrs. Dill says he's like nothing in her experience. She says he doesn't inherit it; Mr. Dill wasn't anything like this about her." Mr. Atwater smiled faintly. "Mrs. Dill wasn't anything like Julia." "No," said his wife. "She was quite a sensible girl. I'd hate to be in her place now, though, when she tells Noble about _this_." "How can Mrs. Dill tell him, since she doesn't know it herself?" "Well--perhaps she ought to know it, so that she _could_ tell him. _Somebody_ ought to tell him, and it ought to be done with the greatest tact. It ought to be broken to him with the most delicate care and sympathy, or the consequences----" "Nobody could foretell the consequences," her husband interrupted:--"no matter how tactfully it's broken to Noble." "No," she said, "I suppose that's true. I think the poor thing's likely to lose his reason unless it _is_ done tactfully, though." "Do you think we really ought to tell Mrs. Dill, Mollie? I mean, seriously: Do you?"