"Some one wanted to know who Mr. Black was, and Mr. Billisoly asked if your name was on the taxpayers' petition. It's like a play with the principal character left out. Suppose--" "Suppose nothing! Go to bed and go to sleep! Your eyes are as big as saucers, blue saucers at that. I don't want to hear another word," and with a kiss as quick as the look that swept the flushed face was scrutinizing, Miss Gibbie waved her to the door. "But aren't you coming? It's nearly twelve o'clock!" "And why do I live alone save to do as I please? No, I'm not coming. Go to bed!" At the door, hand on knob, Mary Cary turned. "How did Mr. Milligan know about my English grandfather? Who told him he was a chief justice?" "I did. And for good reasons. I don't tell my reasons. Go to bed!" "When did you tell him?" "This morning after I left you. /Are/ you going to bed?" "I don't see what you told him for. I don't like my grandfathers. I can't imagine--" "There are many things you can't imagine, and more you don't understand. /Go to bed!/" In her room Mary Cary stood before the tall, old-fashioned bureau, with its small swinging glass, and brushed her hair mechanically and with thoughts afar off; then putting down her brush laid it on a letter she had not seen before. "Why, it's John's!" she said. "I wonder how it got here?" She held it up, then put it back again. "It must have come on the last mail and Hedwig brought it in. Silly!" She braided her hair slowly, tied on its ribbons, then knelt by the big tester bed to say her prayers. Her face rested sideways on the open palms of her hands, crossed one on the other, and her eyes closed sleepily. "I'm too tired to read it to-night, and to-morrow I will be too busy. But I'm glad it's here. In case of trouble--or anything, John is such-- a sure help." Chapter VI MIDNIGHT The heat was oppressive. Miss Gibbie turned off all lights save the one on the candle-stand by the high mahogany bed, with its valance of white pique, drew the large wing chair close to the open window and sat down in it. Over her gown she had put on a mandarin coat bought somewhere in China, and on her feet were the slippers embroidered for her by a Japanese girl she had sent to a hospital in Nagasaki. The moon, coming out of its hiding place, for a moment poised clear and cool in a trough of gray banked by curling clouds of black, sent a thread of pale light upon the golden dragons on the coat, flashed on the slippers, and was lost in the darkness under which it darted. Miss Gibbie, watching, nodded toward it, and tapped the stool on which her feet rested with the tip of her toes. "The moon is like one's self," she said. "Go where you will you can't get rid of it. Spooky thing, a moon. One big eye. Don't like it!"