Mrs. Richie sighed. "I don't suppose I ought to tell you, but I can't seem to help it. I discovered the other day that David is not heart-whole, yet. He is dreadfully bitter; dreadfully! I don't believe it's prudent for him to live in Mercer. Do you? He would be constantly seeing Elizabeth." She had had her breakfast, and they had gone into Mr. Ferguson's garden so that he might throw some crumbs to the pigeons and smoke his morning cigar before taking her to the Maitland house. They were sitting now in the long arbor, where the Isabella grapes were ripening sootily in the sparse September sunshine which sifted down between the yellowing leaves, and touched Mrs. Richie's brown hair; Robert Ferguson saw, with a pang, that there were some white threads in the soft locks. His eyes stung, so he barked as gruffly as he could. "Well, suppose he does see her? You can't wrap him up in cotton batting for the rest of his life. That's what you've always tried to do, you hen with one chicken! For the Lord's sake, let him alone. Let him take his medicine like any other man. After he gets over the nasty taste of it, he'll find there's sugar in the world yet; just as I did. Only I hope he won't be so long about it as I was." She sighed, and her soft eyes filled. "But you don't know how he talked. Oh, I can't help thinking it must be my fault! If he had had another kind of a mother, if his own mother had lived--" "Own grandmother!" said Robert Ferguson, disgustedly; "the only trouble with you as a mother, is that you've been too good to the cub. If you'd knocked his head against the wall once or twice, you'd have made a man of him. My dear, you really must not be a goose, you know. It's the one thing I can't stand. Helena," he interrupted himself, chuckling, "you will be pleased to know that Cherry-pie (begging her pardon!) thinks that David will ultimately console himself by falling in love with Nannie! 'It would be very nice,' she says." They both laughed, then David's mother sighed: "But just think how delightful to feel that life is as simple as that," she said. Robert Ferguson picked a grape, and took careful aim at a pigeon; "Helena," he said, in a low voice, "before you see Nannie, perhaps I ought to tell you something. I wouldn't, only I know she will, and you ought to understand it. Can you keep a secret?" "I can," Mrs. Richie said briefly. "I believe it," he said, with a sudden dryness. Then he told her the story of the certificate. "What! Nannie forged? _Nannie!_" "We don't use that word; it isn't pretty. But that's what it amounts to, of course. And that's where David's money went." "I suppose Mrs. Maitland changed her mind at the last," Mrs. Richie said; "well, I'm glad she did. It would have been too cruel if she hadn't given something to Blair."