"Thank you. No, I don't need you now." Catherine waited until the door closed. She still hesitated. It must be Charles. Better to call him outside, at noon. The telephone operator in the main office had a furtive, watchful eye which probably matched her ear! But noon was an hour away. "Charles? Hello." "That you, Catherine? I've been trying to get you for a solid hour!" "I'm sorry." Was that girl listening! "When did you get in?" "Early. Catherine, where have you put my lecture notes? The seminar, you know. That class meets to-day. I can't find a damned shred of them." His voice seemed to stand him at her shoulder, with the funny, distracted flush, and rumpled hair of one of his fruitless searches. "I haven't seen them this fall." She was moving rapidly about the house, almost in kinæsthetic images. Where would she look? "Didn't you file those in your office last spring? With the manuscript of your book?" "Um. Perhaps. I'll look there. Good-by." Catherine hung the instrument slowly in place. Not a word of greeting. But he had probably thrown his study into bedlam--and his disposition. She smiled, faintly, and refusing to admit the little barbed regret, turned to her work. At noon, in the stuffy telephone booth at the elevator entrance of the St. Francis Club she tried to reach him. But Miss Kelly said he wasn't coming in for luncheon, and no one answered the call for his office. The afternoon closed around her with steady concentration. Dr. Roberts had said that on Friday there would be a conference: a head of a normal college and a state commissioner of education would be on hand from the West. She wanted this preliminary classification ready. As she approached the house that evening, she discovered, ironically, that her mind was revolving schemes for propitiation. Steak and onions for dinner, and cream pie, and tactful inquiries about the trip. There was no rush of children at the sound of her key. She heard Marian's voice, and then Charles's. She hurried down the hall. Letty sat on her father's knee, a crisscross of adhesive plaster on her forehead, from which her hair was smoothed wetly back. "She would jump on my Pogo stick, Muvver," protested Marian, "and I told her not to, and----" Catherine was on her knees beside the chair, and Letty's mouth began to quiver again at a fresh spectator of her injury. "It isn't a bad cut," said Charles, distantly. "Fortunately I came in." "But where's Miss Kelly?" "She left at six. I supposed you had instructed her to stay here until you came." "I told her to run along." Flora stopped at the doorway, her red flowers bobbing over the brim of her hat. "I says I'd stay. An' those chillun was all right one minute and the next they wasn't." "Where's Spencer?" Catherine rose. She had waited a long time for a bus, but it was just past six. "In the bathroom, washing off the blood," said Charles, severely. "He was wiping Letty's face when I came in."