She entered the Burrage dwelling without the formality of knocking; and, familiar with the household, passed directly through a narrow, darkened hall, on which all the doors were closed, to the dining room and kitchen beyond. As she had known he would be, Hazzard Burrage was seated with his feet, in lamb's wool slippers, thrust under the stove. For the rest, but lacking his coat, he was formally and completely dressed; his corded throat was folded in a formal black stock, a watch chain and seal hung across his waistcoat. Mrs. Burrage was occupied in lining a cupboard with fresh shelf paper with a cut lace border. She was a small woman, with quick exact movements and an impatient utterance; but her husband was slow--a man who deliberately studied the world with a deep-set gaze. “I thought you might have heard,” Olive stated directly, on the edge of a painted split-hickory chair. They hadn't, Mrs. Burrage informed her: “I expect he'll just come walking in. That's the way he always did things, and I guess California, or anywhere else, won't change him to notice it. And when he does,” she continued, “he's going to be put out with Hazzard. I told you Jason sent us three thousand dollars to get the front of the house fixed up. He said he didn't want to find his father sitting in the kitchen when he got back. Jason said we were to burn three or four stoves all at once. But he won't, and that's all there is to it. Why, he just put the money in the bank and there it lies. I read him the parable about the talents, but it didn't stir him an inch.” “Jason always was quick acting,” Hazzard Burrage declared; “he never stopped to consider; and it's as like as not he'll need that money. It wouldn't surprise me if when he sat down and counted what he had Jason'd find it was less than he thought.” “He wrote me,” Olive stated, “that we could build a house as big as the Canderays'.” “Jason always was one to talk,” Mrs. Burrage replied in defense of her son. Olive moved over to the older woman and held the dishes to be replaced in the cupboard. They commented on the force of the wind throughout the night. “The tail end of a blow at sea,” Bur-rage told them; “I wouldn't wonder but it reached right down to the West Indies.” “I hope he brings me a grey satinet pelerine like I wrote,” said Mrs. Burrage. She was obviously flushed at the thought of the possession of such a garment--a fact which Olive felt, at the other's age, to be inappropriate to the not distant solemnity of the Christian ordeal of death. She repeated automatically: “... turn from these vanities unto the living God.” She rose: “I'll let you know if I hear anything, and anyhow stop in tomorrow.” Outside, sere leaves were whirling in grey funnels of dust, the intense blue bay sparkled under the cobalt sky; and, leaving Marlboro Street with a hand on her bonnet, she ran directly into Honora Canderay.