"She is _so_! I've got a young son she ought to know," remarked Mr. Madison serenely, with an elderly father's total unconsciousness of the bridgeless gap between seven and thirteen. "He'd like to play with her. I'll call him." "I expect we better be getting on," said Pryor. "It's near Lottie's bedtime; we just came out for our evening walk." "Well, he can come and shake hands with her anyway," urged Hedrick's father. "Then they'll know each other, and they can play some other time." He turned toward the house and called loudly: "Hedrick!" There was no response. Behind the back of his chair Hedrick could not be seen. He was still sitting immovable, his eyes torpidly fixed upon the wall. "Hed-_rick_!" Silence. "Oh, _Hed_-rick!" shouted his father. "Come out here! I want you to meet a little girl! Come and see a nice little girl!" Mr. Pryor's grandchild was denied the pleasure. At the ghastly words "_little girl_," Hedrick dropped from his chair flat upon the floor, crawled to the end of the porch, wriggled through the railing, and immersed himself in deep shadow against the side of the house. Here he removed his shoes, noiselessly mounted to the sill of one of the library windows, then reconnoitred through a slit in the blinds before entering. The gas burned low in the "drop-light"--almost too dimly to reveal the two people upon a sofa across the room. It was a faint murmur from one of them that caused Hedrick to pause and peer more sharply. They were Cora and Corliss; he was bending close to her; her face was lifting to his. "Ah, kiss me! Kiss me!" she whispered. Hedrick dropped from the sill, climbed through a window of the kitchen, hurried up the back-stairs, and reached his own apartment in time to be violently ill in seclusion. CHAPTER NINE