"Little birds tell them to her," said the child, in her sudden, piercing voice. "I guess they're trained birds." After dinner, when they had gone up-stairs, the colonel stopped with Viola at her door. The passage was dimly lit by a gas-jet at the farther end, which was turned economically low. From the parlor bursts of laughter ascended. "Well, good night, honey," said the colonel. "I'm sorry you're so tired." Then, somewhat uneasily, "Do you think you'll like it here?" "Oh, I think so," said Viola. The door swung back, and the dark, stuffy interior of the room opened before her like a long-closed cave. She turned her cheek and the colonel kissed it. "Do you think you'll be able to stand those people?" he asked, in the low tone of confidential criticism. "I dare say they'll be very nice when we get to know them. Everybody's strange at first. Good night, father." She went in and closed the door. The aloofness of her manner had never been more marked. It seemed to place the colonel in the position of a stranger to whom she preserved an attitude of polite reticence. Feeling shrunk and chilled, he crept away to his own room. So the new life began. Everything was very strange, and the weather was very hot. The colonel, who had not for fifty years known a warmer climate than San Francisco, wilted in the furnace-like airs of the interior city. The first burning week exhausted him as a serious illness might have done. Viola, who had never seen her father ill, was frightened, and sent for a doctor. The doctor came, asked questions, and looked wise. He said the colonel's heart was weak, and that he seemed in a very debilitated condition. A trip to the seaside would do him good; cooler weather would brace him up. When the man had gone there was a silence between the father and daughter. Through the drawn blinds the golden cracks of intruding sunshine cut the dimness that Viola had made by closing all the shutters in a futile attempt to keep the room cool. Presently she said, in a voice that she tried to make cheerful: "As soon as you get stronger we will go on. It's too hot and uncomfortable here for any one to stay." "Go on where?" the colonel asked, with the light of interest in his eyes. "Farther east. It will be cool enough there. We can go to one of those seaside places you read about in the papers--a cheap one, I mean. We have plenty of money for the trip." The colonel moved restlessly in his chair, and finally twitched open one of the shutters. The hot breath of the garden, laden with heavy exotic scents, puffed in through the opening like incense. "Don't take me farther away, Viola," he said suddenly, in a tone like that of a querulous child; "don't take me out of California." "Do you want to stay here?" she asked. "If we can't go back," he answered, looking at her wistfully. "I didn't think you minded," she said; "I thought you'd like the change."