She was in a position therefore to aid Henry Endicott privately, were he in need—as she believed he was. The professor’s awkwardness when he had called on her several evenings previous, when he had really come to offer his assistance to Lorna’s father, had served to convince Miss Ida that the Endicotts were in need. For years everybody who knew him had said that Professor Endicott was wasting his substance in experiments that would never amount to anything of a practical nature. Miss Ida herself believed that he had frittered away much time and money since resigning as a young man from the chair of experimental chemistry in a mid-New England college. Just what had happened twenty and more years before this present date to drive the wedge between Miss Ida and Henry Endicott no member of either family knew. A match that at the time was considered eminently fitting had suddenly become impossible. That was all anybody—save the two most interested persons themselves—ever learned about it. It was years later, when Ralph and Lorna were half grown, that Professor Endicott and Miss Ida Nicholet began to agree on one important subject. The two families should be united through Ralph and Lorna. The young people, they both said, were made for each other. That this statement had likewise been made _en famille_ about themselves when they were young, Miss Ida and Henry Endicott perhaps had forgotten. At least—as has been shown—neither would admit to nephew and niece any good reason why the latter should not fulfill the arrangement. On this particular morning Miss Ida was not thinking of her niece’s opposition to being joined with Ralph Endicott in wedlock. She flung a shawl about her shoulders and wound a knitted scarf around her head to venture out into the gale. A less important errand than the one she had in view might have caused her to hesitate on the side porch. The gale off the water was all but breath-taking. On a day like this Mrs. Lucy Markham would not leave her own apartment. The children would be in the playroom at the top of the house, as they could not race the beaches below the clay cliff. Professor Endicott? Miss Ida saw Jerome coming from the direction of the stable and garage, the main part of which building was devoted to the experimental laboratory. So she did not go to the house, but halted the old serving man on the walk. "Where is Professor Endicott, Jerome?" "He’s in his study—I mean the laboratory, Miss Nicholet. He’s just had me in to shave him, Miss. Isn’t this a dreadful morning?" "I wish to see the professor at once, Jerome," said Miss Ida, and hurried on without rejoinder to his question, such was her agitation. When she turned the knob of the door the wind drove both the door and herself inward with a crash. "Hoity-toity! What’s this?" ejaculated the professor.