At the door a small girl with tangled curls and big blue eyes presented a note which she said was to be given to Miss Joyce and “not to nobody else,” and which she steadily refused to surrender even for a glimpse until Miss Joyce should be forthcoming. There was something racially strong and characterful in the very swing of her little gingham petticoats as she swung sturdily down the front path and out the gate with the note still clasped to her bosom. Eugene called Dorothea to the front window to identify her, and Miss Dorothea lifted her nose contemptuously: “Oh, that’s Darcy Sherwood’s niece, Lib Knox. She’s a tomboy. She can throw mud just like the boys, and once she tied a string across the sidewalk and tripped our teacher and she fell flat, because our teacher told her she was too dirty to come in the school yard. She’s only six but she’s awful bad!” Dorothea said it virtuously, and licked her lips to hide the jelly she had been eating out of a new tumbler she had just opened. Darcy Sherwood! What had Darcy Sherwood to do with Joyce? Could that have been Darcy’s voice over the phone that morning? Eugene was silent and thoughtful during their walk to Judge Peterson’s and strode so fast that Nannette could scarcely keep pace with him. As they waited after ringing the old-fashioned door bell he looked down frowning and admonished his wife: “Now, don’t you be a fool and spill the beans.” They were ushered into the Judge’s room where he lay propped up by pillows in a great old sleigh bed, with his wife on one side fanning him gently, and his son sitting by the window with some papers in his hands, but as soon as they were seated the Judge’s eyes looked toward the door restlessly, and his big voice which had lost none of its brusqueness with his illness, although it quavered a little with weakness, asked: “Where’s Joyce? Didn’t you bring the little girl?” Nannette looked frightened and turned toward her husband to take the initiative and Eugene hastened to explain that Joyce hadn’t been feeling well since the funeral and they had sent her away on a little trip to relatives to get rested after the shock of her aunt’s death. The kind, rugged old face looked disappointed, and his head sank back a little farther on the pillows: “H’m! Then there’s nothing doing,” he said as if the matter were finished, “Dan, I thought I told you to tell ’em it was no use their coming without Joyce.” “I did, Father. I thought I made it plain.” “Yes, Judge, he told me, but I felt that if you understood the matter you would feel it wasn’t necessary to wait for the formality of Joyce being here. She doesn’t know much about business anyway and would naturally leave everything to me.” “H’m!” The Judge eyed the younger man thoughtfully, keenly, but said nothing more than that.