"Yes, you will come for your own convenience, not your mother's pleasure. See here, Fred! You once asked me if you were like your father,"--involuntarily she raised her hand, as if to fend off a blow--"I had great respect for Mr. Payton in many ways, but he had the selfishness of power. _So have you._ Whew!" he ended, rising, "I believe it's a hundred in the shade!" Fred was silent. "I am coming out to Lakeville in a day or two. Got my new car yesterday, and I am burning to display it." Still she was silent. A watering-cart lumbered by and some children squealed in a sudden cold splash. "Until now," he said, "I have believed that you were a good sport." "And now you think I'm not?" "You don't seem to know what the word Duty means;--which is another way of saying that you don't play the game." "If the game is to make things pleasant for Mortimore, and put picture puzzles together, I don't care to play it," she said, cockily. She followed him to the front door and stood there as he went down the steps. But when he reached the gate she darted after him and clapped a frank hand on his shoulder. "_You're_ a dead game sport! I don't know any other man who'd have biffed me right in the face like that." "I skinned my own knuckles," he admitted, with a droll gesture of rubbing a bruised hand. "Still, I don't mind, if it does you good." "Cheer up! Maybe it will," she said, and, laughing, threw a kiss to him and vanished into the house. He laughed, too--then frowned. "She wouldn't have kissed her hand to Maitland. I don't count," he thought. As he walked off, hugging the shady side of the street, he added, "I _am_ a fool!" Frederica had not the slightest intention of becoming immediately domestic, but as she went up-stairs to dress she happened to glance down the little corridor in the ell, and there, outside Morty's door, was poor, faithful Miss Carter. Her one night off a week, when Mrs. Baker, from the livery-stable, took her place, did not suffice to lessen very much the burden of Morty's perpetual society, and that and the heat had obviously worn upon her. "Miss Carter, why don't you go to the theater?" Frederica called to her, impulsively. "I'll stay with Morty to-night. I suppose we can't get Mrs. Baker on such short notice?" "No, she can't come except on her regular night; and you are going to a dance, Miss Freddy," the tired woman objected, rather faintly. "Nonsense! I don't care about dancing. Go ahead. Get a ticket for 'Heels and Toes.' It's corking." Her mother followed her into her room to thank her. "That's very sweet of you, Freddy. Not that Morty needs anybody when he once gets to sleep; so far as that goes, I don't need to go to the expense of having Mrs. Baker here on Miss Carter's evenings out; but I like to feel there's some one near, you know." "It's less lonely for you," Fred said, with unwonted insight.