Lois's brows lifted slightly; the slim fingers of her right hand clasped the gold band by which the blue enameled watch was attached to her left wrist. She tilted her head to one side, as though mildly curious as to the drift of her sister's remark. "Oh, you mustn't mind that at all! I should have been sorry if you had gone to any trouble for me. Dropping in this way, what should one expect?" A pretty shrug expressed her feeling that nothing at all had been expected. "Jo, do you remember that time you were running from Captain Joshua Wilson's cow, in his pasture over there beyond the college, and you fell over a fence and cracked a tooth, and how you bawled about it? And I suppose that gold tooth is a memento of the occasion. We used to be the maddest of harum-scarums in those days!" It was not wholly kind, perhaps, for a woman whose white, even teeth were undisfigured by fillings thus to direct attention to the marks of the dentist's tool in her sister's mouth. And yet Lois had not meant to be unkind; the past as symbolized by Captain Wilson's cow sent her off tangentially into the recent history of Captain Joshua's family, and she demanded information as to the Wilsons' daughter Amanda, who ran away and married an army officer she had met at Columbus, Ohio. As the sisters had never liked Amanda Wilson, they were not pleased to be obliged to confess that the marriage had been a satisfactory one in every particular, and that Amanda's husband was now a colonel. The barometer fell steadily and the gloom of the Arctic night deepened in the faces of the trio. "Anybody have any more eggnog?" asked Amzi guilelessly. "I think," said Mrs. Fosdick furiously, "that we've all had enough of that stuff." This was the least bit pointed, as her husband was at that moment filling a fourth glass for himself. Mrs. Waterman renewed her attack, drawing nearer to the culprit. "Of course, you realize, Lois, that after all that has happened, your coming back here, particularly unannounced, creates a very delicate situation. It can't be possible that you don't understand how it complicates things--that as a matter of fact--" "Oh, as a matter of fact it's a great bore to talk of it! I suppose I'm the one that's likely to be most annoyed, but you needn't waste any time being sorry for me. I didn't have to come; nobody asked me. You'll not be in the least embarrassed by my coming. I don't look as though I were in deep distress about anything, do I? Well, I'm not. So don't prepare to weep over me. Tears are bad for the complexion and puckering up your face makes wrinkles." Fosdick snickered, an act of treachery on his part which brought his wife to Mrs. Waterman's support. Fanny Fosdick was readier of speech than Josephine, who was inclined to pomposity when she tried to be impressive.