Jean laughed contentedly. In her other ear somebody else was telling her the Princess was one fourth Cherokee and the rest Scotch. But it all stimulated and interested her. As Kit would have said, there was something new doing every minute down here. The long weeks of monotony in Gilead faded away. Nearly every day after class Mrs. Everden took the girls out for a spin through the Park in her car, and twice they went home with her for tea in her apartment on Central Park South. It was all done in soft browns and ivories, and Uncle Frank was in brown and ivory too, a slender soldierly gentleman with ivory complexion and brown hair just touched with gray. He said very little, Jean noticed, but listened contentedly to his wife chat on any subject in her vivacious way. “I trust your father is surely recovering up there,” he said once, as Jean happened to stand beside him near a window, looking down at the black swans preening themselves on a tiny island below. “I often think how much better it would be if we old chaps would take a playtime now and then instead of waiting until we’re laid up for repairs. Jerry was like I am, always too busy for a vacation. But he had a family to work for, and Mrs. Everden and I are alone. I’d like mighty well to see him. What could I send him that he’d enjoy?” “Oh, I don’t know,” Jean thought anxiously. “I think he loves to read now, more than anything, and he was saying just before I left he wished he had some new books, books that show the current thought of the day, you know what I mean, Mr. Everden. I meant to take him up a few, but I wasn’t sure which ones he would like.” “Let me send him up a box of them,” Mr. Everden’s eyes twinkled. “I’ll wake him up. And tell him for me not to stagnate up there. Rest and get well, but come back where he belongs. There comes a point after a man breaks down from overwork, when he craves to get back to that same work, and it’s the best tonic you can give him, to let him feel and know he’s got his grip back and is standing firmly again. I’ll send the books.” Sunday Bab planned for them to go to service down at the Church of the Ascension on lower Fifth Avenue, but Mrs. Crane thought Jean ought to hear the Cathedral music, and Aunt Win was to take them in the evening to the Russian Church for the wonderful singing there. Jean felt amused and disturbed too, as she dressed. Up home Cousin Roxy said she didn’t have a mite of respect for church tramps, those as were forever gadding hither and yon, seeking diversion in the houses of the Lord. Still, when she reached the Cathedral, and heard the familiar words resound in the great stone interior, she forgot everything in a sense of reverence and peace.