"Should I wash for dinner now, Muvver?" Marian still clung to her mother's arm. Catherine, looking down at the brown eyes, was disturbed. Marian was jealous of Spencer. She resented--oh, well, probably that was natural enough. Her legs outgrew her dresses, and her personality was growing as rapidly, shooting up, not wholly caught in civilized patterns. "Can you keep your hands clean until dinner? Perhaps you might wait until Daddy has come. Run along, children. I want to speak to Miss Kelly a moment." "What about, Muvver?" "Business." Catherine was firm, and Marian's mood shifted quickly. "Show Letty your ole radium," she said, dragging Letty after her, and Spencer pursued them in haste. "You needn't stay for Letty's supper," said Catherine, as Miss Kelly returned. "You've been very kind to give me so many additional hours. And you certainly deserve to-morrow. It is several weeks, isn't it, since you've had Sunday?" "That's all right, Mrs. Hammond." Miss Kelly laid the retrieved shirt on the dresser. "Of course, if you don't need me to-morrow." She looked at Catherine warily, her sandy lashes blinking, her nose still reddened from the afternoon. "You will want me next week?" "Of course." Catherine frowned, a kind of panic whirring in her. "I wondered. I didn't know. Something your mother said. I knew you needed some one for the children only if you were working." "You must have misunderstood mother." The whirring deepened into fear, like wings, beating to escape the nets spread to catch her. They all expected her to abandon everything, to step back into the old harness. "Of course, I have made no plans, until Spencer was well. But next week"--she spoke out boldly, denying her own doubts--"next week I shall--" she did not finish that sentence. "At any rate, Miss Kelly, I should tell you in advance. I've just been admiring the way you are training the children. You are quite remarkable with them." VIII When Charles came in, Marian flew to meet him, flinging her arms about him as far as they would go, with little squeals of delight. "Daddy, hello; we're going to have a party. Letty, too. Spencer can sit up at the table." "I should say I could," broke in Spencer, indignantly. He looks tired--Catherine smiled at him over Letty's yellow head. Sallow, discouraged. His glance withdrew quickly from hers, stopped at Spencer. "How's the boy? Fine?" "Daddy!" Marian pulled at his sleeve. "I thought of something. Let me whisper it." And Catherine, while Letty slipped from her lap in an endeavor to learn what Marian was whispering, thought: it's a breaking off place, to-night. The interim is over. "You'd better ask mother." Charles ruffled Marian's cropped head. "No! A secret, Daddy!" "Well. Ask Mrs. O'Lay, then." "Tell Letty!" She pounded on his knee. "Here, you!" He glanced again at Catherine, and his grin was suddenly like Spencer's. "That's no way to learn a secret. You wait."