green neck, faded to streaky white. The office dining-room, about which Blair had begun to be impertinent when he was eight years old, was of noble proportions and in its day must have had great dignity; but in Blair's childhood its day was over. Above the dingy white wainscoting the landscape paper his grandfather had brought from France in the thirties had faded into a blur of blues and buffs. The floor was uncarpeted save for a Persian rug, whose colors had long since dulled to an even grime. At one end of the room was Mrs. Maitland's desk; at the other, filing cases, and two smaller desks where clerks worked at ledgers or drafting. The four French windows were uncurtained, and the inside shutters folded back, so that the silent clerks might have the benefit of every ray of daylight filtering wanly through Mercer's murky air. A long table stood in the middle of the room; generally it was covered with blue-prints, or the usual impedimenta of an office. But it was not an office table; it was of mahogany, scratched and dim to be sure, but matching the ancient claw-footed sideboard whose top was littered with letter files, silver teapots and sugar-bowls, and stacks of newspapers. Three times a day one end of this table was cleared, and the early breakfast, or the noon dinner, or the rather heavy supper eaten rapidly and for the most part in silence. Mrs. Maitland was silent because she was absorbed in thought; Nannie and Blair were silent because they were afraid to talk. But the two children gave a touch of humanness to the ruthless room, which, indeed, poor little Blair had some excuse for calling a "pigsty." "When I'm big," Blair announced one afternoon after school, "I'll have a bunch of flowers on the table, like your mother does; you see if I don't! I like your mother, David." "_I_ don't; _very_ much," Elizabeth volunteered. "She looks out of her eyes at me when I get mad." "I don't like to live at my house," Blair said, sighing. "Why don't you run away?" demanded Elizabeth; "I'm going to some day when I get time." "Where would you run to?" David said, practically. David was always disconcertingly practical. But Elizabeth would not be pinned down to details. "I will decide that when I get started." "I believe," Blair meditated, "I will run away." "I'll tell you what let's do," Elizabeth said, and paused to pick up her right ankle and hop an ecstatic yard or two on one foot; "I tell you what let's do: let's all run away, _and get married!_" The other three stared at her dumfounded. Elizabeth, whirling about on her toes, dropped down on all--fours to turn a somersault of joy; when she was on her feet she said, "Oh, _let's_ get married!" But it took Blair, who always found it difficult to make up his mind, a few moments to accept the project.