"You'll 'be a brother to me'?" she quoted; it was her only bitter word; and she covered it with a laugh. "'Course we are pals, always! Howard, I want to tell you what I accomplished here this summer. And oh, by the way, did you give 'Aunty Leighton' the pamphlet on the New Zealand situation?" She pulled Zip up on her lap, and teased him, kissing him between his eyes, and squeezing his little nose in her hand. Howard said, as casually as his breath permitted, that Tommy Leighton was a fine chap--"but no mind, you know. One of those people you can't argue with on any really serious subject like suffrage. Opinions all run into molds. Can't bend 'em." Now that he had got started talking, he couldn't stop; he talked faster and faster; he told her everything he had ever heard or surmised about Mr. Leighton; "his ideas belong to the dark ages--" "Believes in sex slavery, I suppose?" Fred interposed. "Exactly! I--I guess I'd better be getting along," he said, with a sort of gasp. Her instant acquiescence, in springing to her feet, was at once a relief and a stab. "Would you mind," she said, easily, "putting a basket into your tonneau and leaving it at our house? Flora and I will have such a lot of things to carry in town to-morrow." As she spoke, she was listening with satisfaction to her own voice--calm, matter-of-fact, friendly. He said he would be delighted to take the basket--"or anything else! Load me up, and I'll deliver the goods in Payton Street to-night!" "Oh, no; it's too late," she said, laughing; "but if you'll take it around in the morning--" "Of course I will; delighted!" "I'll tell Flora to take it out to the car," she said; and went into the kitchen: "Flo--" she began, and stopped. The kitchen was empty. "Flora!" she called, looking at the unwashed dishes in the sink, and at Flora's untasted supper set out on the kitchen table in the midst of a clutter of cards. She said a single distracted word under her breath; went to the foot of the stairs and called up to the little cell under the eaves.... No answer. She ran up and looked into each room.... No Flora. "She seems to have vanished," she said, coming into the living-room with a puzzled look. "She isn't in the house. Do you suppose she can be wandering about in the woods at this time of the night?" In her own mind, frantic at Howard's delayed departure, she was saying to herself: "I'll die if I don't get rid of him! I could _kill_ Flora!" She sat down again by the fire, and said that she was bothered about Zippy's eyes; that made a momentary diversion. Howard examined the little dog's eyes and said they were all right; then made desultory remarks about dogs in China. He was trying, wildly, to find something--_anything!_--to say. Both were listening intently for Flora's step. "I'll see if I can find her now," Frederica said.