After dinner Dr. and Mrs. Ware left the three young people together upon the veranda. Horace asked Rhoda about her visit to Levi Coffin’s in Cincinnati, but Charlotte cut in with some saucy remarks that set them to laughing and when presently she strolled off across the lawn to a grape arbor at the other side of the yard, he was in close attendance. Rhoda brought her sewing from the house and began hemming the flounces for Charlotte’s gown. There was a suggestion of triumph in Charlotte’s expression and manner when they came back and all three stood under the butternut tree beside the east gate, where Dr. Ware’s carriage was waiting for him to dismiss a patient. Had she not taken young Hardaker away from her sister at once and herself appropriated all his attention? But when she could not help seeing that the ordinary friendliness between the two was neither disturbed nor accentuated, she began to think that perhaps her previous surmise had been mistaken. And when Horace bade them a casual good-by, in which her keen eyes could discover no trace of any unusual sentiment, and drove away with their father, she decided that after all it had not been worth while. “But anyway it was more fun than eating dinner alone,” she thought. “And when Mr. Jefferson Delavan comes--” CHAPTER III We blundering humans are much given to looking back over our lives and saying, “There we made a mistake. If it were to do over again we would do thus and so, and then things would turn out much better and happier.” But if we could go back and live our lives over again, at how many of the turning points would we have the courage, or the desire, to take the other direction? How often would we care to risk any different combination of events than that which we had formerly dared? For experience has taught us, at least, how endless and how momentous is the line of events, not only for ourselves but also for a growing multitude of others, that we set in motion with each choice of the forking road. Moved by our own desires and the compelling force of outward circumstances we travel over the course the first time, choosing our route with little thought for the intricate coils of consequence that hang upon our steps. But if we were to journey over it again would not our feet drag at the turnings and waver back to the path we already knew, rather than venture blindly upon some new chain of events, leading none could tell whither and ending only with the end of time?