When Dan returned—he had been in New York—she wondered if he had heard Thurley sing and had sent her flowers or tried to see her. As she thanked him for her present, a violet silk sunshade, she wondered if it was a sop to conscience. A cruel regiment of doubts threatened to defeat her loyal resolutions. But she made no comment nor did Dan. They talked of the summer garden, the proposed automobile trip with some other young people, the addition to Dan’s store and the splendid way in which his business was going. “Don’t, for cat’s sake, take that Spooner girl with us!” Dan said testily, as they returned to the vacation subject. “She hangs around here all the time. What in the world do you see in her anyway?” “Nothing, but I’m sorry for her, she’s so unhappy.” “What’s she unhappy about? A great, big, strapping girl who ought to be at work! She makes fudge while her mother irons her dresses, every one says so.” “Oh, Dan!” pleaded Lorraine. “Ever since she’s moved here from Pike she has camped on our doorstep. She makes me nervous with that whining voice and that giggle.” Here Dan gave excellent imitations of each. “She rouges like a burlesque actress and dresses her hair in curls.” “Oh, poor Cora Spooner was terribly in love with an actor. He was in a stock company at Pike and he did encourage her—” “Tell that to the marines,” Dan said testily, going to the talking machine and putting on a lively band record. “I can’t help that. I notice it didn’t affect her appetite. Why don’t she get a job?” “Well, there’s nothing in her line here,” Lorraine’s forehead wrinkled anxiously. She was afraid Dan would forbid Cora’s coming to the house, which command would be absolute. Cora Spooner brought a certain zest into Lorraine’s existence. She was a rather handsome girl of twenty-three or four with no intention of working for her living if it could be otherwise arranged. Her mother, whose small pension and capital enabled her to “get along,” was Cora’s chief bugbear. Cora was a bundle of discontent and weird notions, trying to play the bird in the gilded cage rôle and complain that Birge’s Corners was nothing but a prison. She soon discovered that Lorraine’s car was good to ride about in, her food the best to be had; it was jolly to stay in the pink spare room with the over-drapes and crystal candlesticks instead of her own forlorn cottage. Besides, her mother did not understand her; fancy wanting any one to be a stenographer or school teacher when heaven only knew that Cora was born for romance, adventure! She had a good notion to cut her hair short and masquerade about the country as a boy,—men always had such good times. Cora had had a half dozen beaux who always dropped her after a certain length of time, saying she was “soft” and lazy and her mother ought to make her work, and turning their attentions to plain-faced girls who could cook and who had a little money in the bank!