"Three-four-four--Weston," remarked his wife to the telephone. To her husband she said conclusively, "I thought we were agreed to make Lydia's first season everything it ought to be. And isn't she being worth it? There hasn't a girl come out in Endbury in _years_ that's been so popular, or had so much--" She jerked her head around to the telephone--"Three-four-four--Weston? Is this Mr. Schmidt? I want Mr. Schmidt himself. Tell him Mrs. Emery--" The Judge broke in, with the air of launching the most startling of arguments, "Well, my salary won't stand it; that's sure! If this keeps up I'll have to resign from the bench and go into practice again." His wife looked at him without surprise. "Well, I've often thought that might be a very good thing." She added, with good-humored impatience, "Oh, go along, Nathaniel. You know it's just one of your bilious attacks, and you will catch cold sitting there with all your--Mr. Schmidt, I want to complain about the man who dished up the ice-cream at my last reception. I am going to give another one next week, and I want a different--" "I won't be back to lunch," said her husband. The door slammed. As he turned into the front walk it opened after him, and his wife called after him, "I'm going to give a dinner party for Lydia's girl friends here this evening, so you'd better get your dinner down-town or at the Meltons'. I'll telephone Julia that--" The Judge stopped, disappointment, almost dismay, on his face. "I'm going to keep track from now on," he called angrily, "of just how often I catch a glimpse of Lydia. I bet it won't be five minutes a week." Mrs. Emery evidently did not catch what he said, and as evidently considered it of no consequence that she did not. She nodded indifferently and, drawing in her head, shut the door. At the end of the next week the Judge announced that he had put down every time he and Lydia had been in a room together, and it amounted to just forty-five minutes, all told. Lydia, a dazzling vision in white and gold, had come downstairs on her way to a dance, and because Paul, who was to be her escort, was a little late, she told her father that now was his time for a "visit." This question of "visiting" had grown to be quite a joke. Judge Emery clutched eagerly at anything in the nature of an understanding or common interest between them. "Oh, I don't know you well enough to visit with you," he now said laughingly, "but I'll look at you long enough so I'll recognize you the next time I meet you on the street-car." Lydia sat down on his knee, lightly, so as not to crumple her gauzy draperies, and looked at her father with the whimsical expression that became her face so well. "I'm paying you back," she said gayly. "I remember when I was a little girl I used to wonder why you came all the way out here to eat your meals. It seemed so much easier for you to get them near your office. Honest, I did."