"I am afraid you work too much, you tire yourself," he said, for after her mother's rebuff she had sunk back in her chair with a weary lassitude of pose. Hilda immediately sat up straightly, giving him an almost frightened glance. How unchanged the little face, though the cloud of her hair no longer framed it. Hilda's hair was as smooth as her sister's, only it was brushed straight back, and the soft blue-black coils were massed from ear to ear, and showed, in a coronet-like effect above her head, almost too much hair; it emphasized the pale fragility of her look. "Oh no, I am not tired," she said, "not particularly. I walked home, you see. I am very fond of walking." "Hilda is fond of such funny things," said Katherine, coming from the piano, "of walking in the mud and rain for instance. She is the most persistently, consistently energetic person I ever knew." Katherine paused pleasantly as though for Hilda to speak, but Hilda said nothing and looked even more vague than before, almost dull in fact. "Well, she has had no tea," said Odd, "and after mud and rain that is rather cruel, even as a punishment." Again Hilda gave him the alarmed quick glance; his eyes were humorously kind, and she smiled a slight little smile. "Some tea!" Katherine cried; "my poor Hilda, I'm afraid it is hard-boiled by this time"--she laid her hand on the teapot--"and _almost_ cold. Shall I heat some more water, dear?" "Oh! don't think of it, Katherine, it is almost dinner-time." "Must I be off?" asked Odd, laughing. "How absurd; we don't dine till eight," Katherine said. "It wasn't a hint to me, then, Hilda?" Hilda looked helplessly distressed. "A hint? Oh no, no. How could you think that?" "I was only joking. I didn't really believe you so anxious to get rid of an old friend." Odd, with some determination, crossed the room and sat down beside her. "I want to see a great deal of you if you will let me." "No one sees much of Hilda, not even her own mother," said Mrs. Archinard from her sofa. "It is terrible indeed to feel oneself a cumberer of the earth, unable to suffice to oneself, far less to others. With my failing eyesight I simply cannot read by lamplight, and there are three or four hours at this season when I am absolutely without resources. Yet even those hours Hilda cannot give me." Hilda now looked so painfully embarrassed that Odd was perforce obliged, for very pity's sake, to avert his eyes from her face. "Ah, Mr. Odd," Mrs. Archinard went on, "you do not know what that is. To lie in the gray dusk and watch one's own gray, gray thoughts." "It must be very unpleasant," Odd owned unwillingly, feeling that his character of old friend was being rather imposed upon; this degree of intimacy was certainly unwarranted. "Now, mamma, you usually have friends every afternoon," said Katherine, in her pleasant, even voice. She was preparing some fresh tea. "You make me as well as Hilda feel a culprit."