"Oh, I promised not to tell, how awful." Adelaide Maud grew very dignified. "What did I drop? Oh! I think I remember--my handkerchief!" Mrs. Dudgeon had reflected openly on the fact that it had never been returned to Helen. "I wanted to keep it till we saw you again, but he said he would give it to you when you were nice to him, or something like that." "Till I was nice to him!" The chin dimpled a trifle. "Somehow, I would rather he kept it," said Adelaide Maud dreamily. "Shall I tell him that?" asked Elma anxiously. "Tell him--what nonsense! You mustn’t tell him a syllable. You mustn’t say you’ve told me. It would be so ignominious for him to hear that I knew he had been thieving! Thieving is the word," said Adelaide Maud. Although she talked in a very accusing manner, her voice seemed kind. "Mayn’t I tell him you didn’t mean to quarrel?" asked Elma anxiously. "You don’t know what you are to all of us." Here she sighed deeply. "No," said Adelaide Maud, "you mustn’t tell him anything. I think he must just wait as he suggested, until I am nice to him." "Until you deserved it, he said," cried Elma, triumphantly, remembering properly at last. "I knew it was something like that." "Then he may wait until he is a hundred," said Adelaide Maud with her face in a flame. It was difficult after this ever to talk to Adelaide Maud about Cuthbert with any kind of freedom or pleasure. Elma went home that evening in the bewilderment of an early sunset. Bright rays turned the earth golden, the leaves on the trees laid themselves flat in heavy blobs of green in yellow sunlight, the sky faded to a glimmering blue in the furthermost east. A shower of rain fell from a drifting cloud and the drops hit in large splotches, first on Elma’s hat, on her hand, and then in an indefinite manner stopped. As she turned into her own garden, the White House seemed flooded in a golden glow of colour. Then at last they heard thunder in the distance. Elma never forgot that shining picture, nor the thunder in the distance. It seemed the picture of what life might be, beautiful and safe in one’s own home, thunder only in the distance. The threatening did not alarm her, but the remembrance of it always remained with her. When thunder really began to peal for the Leighton family, she tried to be thankful for the picture of gold. CHAPTER XI The Split Infinitive