“No,” said Mrs. Ranney. Her eyes gleamed dancingly with sudden mischief; she leaned forward with roguish defiance. “I’ll tell you what this is—it’s the ‘Thompson Street Poker Club!’” She relapsed into one of her lovely, helpless fits of half-inaudible laughter in which Mrs. Laurence joined perforce, and the two women held on to each other for mutual support, in feminine fashion. Mrs. Ranney went away the next day at one o’clock, trim and pretty in her blue travelling suit; the women who flocked to bid her good-bye were profuse in offers of caring for Mr. Ranney, but she only thanked them with gentle unresponsiveness, and said that Minda would look after him quite well. It was strange what a difference her departure seemed to make at once in the aspect of the little house; a shadow had fallen over it, a visible grayness of desolation touched it, mistlike; the embowering vines drooped like the adjuncts of a cemetery; there was a curious deadness about the very hang of the curtains, one could see from without, and the half-lowered shades. The very fact of the front doors being closed set the seal of strangeness upon it. A spirit, so vitally sweet, so informing that even inanimate objects reflected it, had departed and left only the cold and empty shell behind, not alone to the intimate heart, but to even the casual observer. “Really, I hate to look over there,” confided Mrs. Spicer to Mrs. Stone. “Minda came into our kitchen a while ago, she said she could hardly stay in the place, she felt just as if Mrs. Ranney and the children were dead. I’m sorry she felt that way. I had the most peculiar feeling myself when I saw her go. Forebodings are so—— Well, of course, you don’t believe in them, but you don’t like them. I’ve just taken some of my nerve tonic. I can hardly blame Mr. Ranney if he stays out till all hours now.” The watching neighbourhood could hardly believe it when eight o’clock struck—half-past eight—and no Mr. Ranney walked jauntily down the street, immaculately attired, with his gold-banded yachting cap on the side of his head. He was known to have come home to his dinner, and afterwards the smoke of his pipe had risen from the verandah. Laurence, urged thereto by his wife, lounged finally up to the door-step to find Ranney sitting there in a disreputable pongee coat, with an old, gray felt basin on his head, smoking, with his shoulders hunched forward and his eyes fixed sombrely before him. He only nodded at Laurence’s greeting, and made room on the steps beside him. “There’s a chair up there, if you want it.” “No, this does well enough,” said Laurence. “How is the election going on?”