He hardly slept that night with worry over having made Laura Childs nervous. "She's the scariest little thing going!" he thought; "but she has sense." She had agreed with him in everything he said about the value of research work, and when he declared that science was the religion of the man of intellect she had said, "Yes, indeed it is!" "That shows what kind of a mind she has," he thought; "but wasn't she cute about not smoking! Her 'father wouldn't let her.' Of course he wouldn't! A girl like that could no more smoke a cigarette than a--a rose could," he ended. This flight of fancy moved him so much that he made a memorandum to send Laura some roses the next day--"and old Fred, too; she's a stunning woman," he said, with real enthusiasm. CHAPTER X Howard Maitland's departure in January for the Philippines surprised several people. "Why should he take such a long journey?" Miss Mary Graham said to Miss Eliza--"unless it is that he discovered that Miss Payton is not the sort of girl to make any man happy, and simply left the country." "I wager he carried a mitten with him!" Miss Eliza said. "What! You think she refused him? Maria Spencer says she's only too anxious to get him. Meeting him in empty apartments! Perhaps that disgusted him. A gentleman does not like to be pursued."... "Why has he gone away?" Mrs. Childs asked Laura, mildly interested. "Because he wants to hunt for shells." "But I thought he was so attentive to Freddy?" "Maybe she turned him down." "She'll get a crooked stick at last, if she doesn't look out," her father said, over the top of his newspaper. Laura came and sat on the arm of his chair. "Fred doesn't need a stick, Billy-boy; she can walk alone." "Every one of you needs a stick," Mr. William Childs assured her; "and I don't know that I would confine it to the thickness of my thumb, either, as the English law does." He reached up a plump hand and pulled her ear. Afterward he told his wife that Lolly was down by the head: "What's the matter with her, Mother?" he said. His two sons might have failed in their various businesses, or taken to their beds with mumps or measles, and he would not have looked as anxious as he did when he heard the little flat note in Laura's voice. "Is she off her feed because I won't let her walk in that circus parade of Fred's?" "Well, she's disappointed." "I won't have a girl of mine tramping through the mud--" "Perhaps it won't be muddy." "It will! It always is. Anyway, I hope it will be. But if she is upset about it, I'll take her to St. Louis with me that week, so she won't feel she's backed out. Mother, you don't suppose _she's_ missing that Maitland chap, do you? Hey? What?" "Oh, dear me, no! Why, Mr. Maitland has been paying attention to Freddy for the last year."