She ran back to him. "Oh, Mr. King," she said, with shy fervor, "he isn't making fun of _us_!--Only of the bad, hard things! One sang out near Fiesta Park the day we thought Greenmount would win the championship, and one was singing the night Jimsy and I found out that we loved each other,--and this one was singing when I came home to-day!" It was a long speech for Honor and she was a little shy and breathless. "I _know_ he doesn't mean it the way you think! He's telling us that the sad, hard, terrible things are not the real things!" Suddenly she bent and kissed his cold forehead. "Oh, Mr. King, if you listen to him with--with your _heart_--you'll hear it! He's mocking at trouble and disgrace,--and misunderstanding and silly pride! He's--_hear him now!_--he's mocking at pain and sorrow and--and _death_!" Then she ran out of the room and down the long stairs and across the lawn to her own house, where a noisy and jubilant section of the Old Guard waited. CHAPTER XI It was happily clear at breakfast that Stephen Lorimer had more or less made his peace--and Honor's peace--with his wife. Like his beloved Job, whom he knew almost by heart, he had ordered his cause and filled his mouth with arguments, and Mildred Lorimer had come to see something rather splendidly romantic in her daughter's quest for her true love. Stephen, who never appeared at breakfast, was down on time, heavy-eyed and flushed, and Honor saw with a pang, in the stern morning light, that he was middle-aged. Her gay young stepfather! His spirit had put a period at nineteen, but his tired body was settling back into the slack lines of the late fifties. Her mother had changed but little, thanks to the unruffled serenity of her spirit and the skillful hands which cared for her. "Muzzie," Honor had said, meeting her alone in the morning, "you are a marvel! Why, you haven't a single gray hair!" "It's--well, I suppose it's because I have it taken care of," said Mrs. Lorimer, flushing faintly. "It's not a dye. It's not in the least a dye--it simply _keeps_ the original color in the hair, that's all. I wouldn't think of using a dye. In the first place, they say it's really dangerous,--it seeps into the brain and affects your mind, and in the second place it gives your face a hard look, always,--and besides, I don't approve of it. But this thing Madame uses for me is _perfectly_ harmless, Honor."