kind what can congeal in running a house.' Mrs. McDougal says a lot of true things. But John"--she put her hand down and drew from under her belt a letter--"John never said in his life a truer one than that I was so alone here. I've been so busy and happy I didn't know I was alone, but since the big Aldens and the little Aldens went home I've felt sometimes I was just a bit of a boat in a great big sea, and I wasn't sure where I was going, though pulling as hard as I could pull." She leaned forward in her chair and, with elbows on knees and chin in her hands, looked down upon the floor of the porch and tapped it with her foot. "But everybody is queer at times. Men are just as queer as women, and John isn't a bit different from the rest. I wonder if there is anybody in the world, /anybody/, who doesn't disappoint you if you know them long enough! There's John." She held the letter between the palms of her hands and tapped her lips with it. "This is the first letter I've had from him in three weeks. Says he is so busy he has no chance to write. Busy! For nearly ten years he's never been too busy. Nobody is too busy to do what they want to do. If you can't take time you can always make it. And John is just proving he's only a man. Somehow I thought he wasn't like the rest. But he is. All of them are alike, every single one. And you can just write to him to-night, Mary Cary, and tell him if he's so busy you're sorry he bothered to write at all." She sat up and took the sheet of paper out of its envelope. "Three pages! Used to write a book. I think John must be crazy. He'd better send nothing than a measly little thing with nothing in it, like that! And going to Norway in August! Mentions it as if it were around the corner." Her face clouded and her brow ridged perplexedly. "I don't understand John. He didn't ask me a thing about it--what I thought of it, or say how long he'd be away, or anything. And Norway is such a long way off." Chapter XVIII PICTURES IN THE FIRE Peggy looked up into the face laughing down into hers, and the big brown eyes blinked. "You've got red apples in your cheeks this mornin', Miss Mary, and your eyes is just as shinin' as them ocean waves we saw last summer, when the sun made 'em sparkle in silver splashes. Just as blue, too. I ain't ever seen such blue eyes and long lashes as you've got, but you don't often have real red apples in your cheeks."