"Do sit down a moment and tell me things," she urged, "while those boys go back there to have it out!" Thus encouraged, Mrs. Covil dropped into a chair, seeming not loath to tell those things she had, while Nancy leaned back and listened duteously for a perfunctory ten minutes. Her thoughts ran ahead to Allan--and to Bernal--as children will run little journeys ahead of a slow-moving elder. Then suddenly something that the troubled little woman was saying fixed her attention, pulling up her wandering thoughts with a jerk. "--and the Doctor asked me, my dear, to treat it quite confidentially, except to bother Cyrus. But, I'm sure he would wish you to know. Of course it is a delicate matter--I can readily understand, as he says, how the public would misconstrue the Doctor's words and apply them generally--forgetting that each case requires a different point of view. But with Harold it is really a perfectly flagrant and dreadful case of mismating--due entirely to the poor boy's thoughtless chivalry--barely twenty-eight, mind you--as if a man nowadays knows his mind at all well before thirty-five. Of course, divorce is an evil that, broadly speaking, threatens the sanctity of our home life--no one understands that better than your husband--and re-marriage after divorce is usually an outrageous scandal--one, indeed, altogether too common--sometimes I wonder what we're coming to, it seems to be done so thoughtlessly--but individual instances are different--'exceptions prove the rule,' you know, as the old saying goes. Now Harold is ready to settle down, and the girl is of excellent family and all that--quite the social and moral brace he needs, in fact." Nancy was attentive, yet a little puzzled. "But--you speak of your son, Harold--is he not already married?"