"You're too slow with your invitation," called her father's voice from the doorway. "We've already arrived!" With a most curious merge of excitement and serenity Jaffrey Bretton and the Intruding Lady walked into the room. "How do you do?" said Daphne, with the faintest possible tinge of formality. "Why, very well indeed," said her father, a bit casually. "How's yourself?" His more immediate attention at the moment seemed fixed on Richard and the waving hair brush. "Oh, I'm all right," drawled Daphne very evenly. Then, with all the sudden tempestuous intensity of a child, she threw her arms [234] in the air. "Only, I don't see--even yet," she cried, "just what Richard Wiltoner is doing here." With a quite unexplainable laugh her father dropped down on the edge of her couch. "Why it's--it's about potatoes!" he laughed. "Richard is getting to be some farmer! He's written a magazine article about some new potato scheme of his. It's very interesting! I like experiments! I'm going to finance it. Not much, you know, but just a little. Just enough to take the strain off--and leave the push on. We'll go over in the spring when it's planting time," he began to laugh all over again, "and see that the experiment is started properly." Quite severely Daphne drew back into her pillows. "I don't think it's very nice of you, Old-Dad," she said, "to laugh so at Richard's farming. Farming is a very--very noble profession, I think." "It certainly is," conceded her father. "And have you rabbits, Richard, as well as potatoes?" she questioned with unbroken [235] gravity. "And will there be jonquils? And new pigs?" "There's liable to be 'most everything by that time," admitted Richard. "Oh, all right then," brightened Daphne. "I think I'll come, too! I've thought a good deal about potatoes, myself!" With a little sigh, half fatigue, half contentment, she glanced up at her father just in time to intercept the glance of "white magic" that passed between him and the Intruding Lady. In an instant her little spine stiffened again. "Only--Richard," she smiled up bravely, "we unmarried people must surely stand by each other! Even after you go away maybe you'll write me about the rabbits and things? It's just a little bit lonely sometimes," quivered the smile, "to be the only unmarried person in the house." With a perceptible quiver of her own smile the Intruding Lady came forward and dropped down on the couch just in front of Old-Dad. "Oh, Little Girl," she said, "don't you think you're ever--ever going to like me any?" [236] "Why, I like you now," whispered Daphne. "And I'd like to like you--lots--only----" A bit worriedly the fluffy head turned and re-turned on its pillows. "Only--I don't understand," fretted Daphne, "about your having so many honeymoons." "So many 'honeymoons?'" smiled the Intruding Lady. "Why, I'm thirty-two years old! And this is the very first honeymoon I've ever had in my life!"