"They stayed in Chicago three days, and she admitted she came on purpose to get acquainted with me. She made me promise to spend a week with them in Cleveland when I can get away, and she gave me the dearest little pearl ring to remember her by. But I wonder--I wonder-- Anyhow I can't tell him until he asks me, can I? And he has never said a word. You know yourself, Carol, you can't blurt things out at a man until he gives you a chance. So my conscience is quite free. And she certainly is adorable. Think of a mother-in-law like that, pink and gray, with dimples. Yes, she is my ideal of a mother-in-law. I haven't met 'father' yet, but he doesn't need to be very nice. A man can hide a hundred faults in one fold of a pocketbook the size of his. "Lots of love to you both,--and you write to Larkie oftener than you do to me, which isn't fair, for she has a husband and a baby and is within reaching distance of father, and I am an orphan, and a widow, and a stranger in a strange land. "But I love you anyhow. "Connie." CHAPTER XV THE SECOND STEP They sat on canvas chairs on the sand outside the porch of the sanatorium, warmly wrapped in rugs, for the summer evenings in New Mexico are cold, and watched the shadows of evening tarnish the gold of the mesa. Like children, they held hands under the protecting shelter of the rug. They talked of little Julia off in Mount Mark, how she was growing, the color of her eyes, the shape of her fingers. They talked of her possible talents, and how they could best be developed, judging as well as they could in advance by the assembled qualities of all her relatives. David suggested that they might be prejudiced in her favor a little, for as far as they could determine there was no avenue of ability closed to her, but Carol stanchly refused to admit the impeachment. They talked of the schools best qualified to train her, of the teachers she must have, of the ministers they must demand for her spiritual guidance. They talked of the thousand bad habits of other little girls, and planned how Julia should be led surely, sweetly by them. Then they were silent, thinking of the little pink rosebud baby as she had left them. The darkness swept down from the mountains almost as sand-storms come, and Carol leaned her head against David's shoulder. She was happy. David was so much better. The horrible temperature was below ninety-nine at last, and David was allowed to walk about the mesa, and his appetite was ravenous. Maybe the doctors were wrong after all. He was certainly on the high-road to health now. She was so glad David had not known how near the dark valley he had passed.