Two years of college had done little to affect Sard Bogart's life. True, those two years she had trodden the athletic-social paths of the American academic experience gaily, then the death of her mother called her home. Her father's appeal made on the stark, lonely night after the funeral had created circumstances she had met four-square. From that time on, Sard, with youthful heroism, had seen her life cut out for her. She was to run the home and "keep things bright" for her father. There was also the Judge's sister, Miss Aurelia, of the age always in conjecture, and of a curious beauty that made poetry of an otherwise ineffective personality. Miss Aurelia's small head was covered with swathes of vital auburn hair, her delicate skin had porcelain pinks and whites, and her soft eyes and slim frame were of a curious suggestive quality that only needed force and will to make her a vibrant, seductive human creature. But this force and will were lacking. Miss Aurelia had been reared altogether on the "ladylike" plan. So while there was no look of wear and tear on her, no wrinkles on her face, no gray in her hair, and while her teeth were even, with the effect of crowding her pursy mouth, yet all these signs and colors of her spoke of untried, untested things; there was an eternal insecurity in her rabbity chin, her soft apologetic voice, the tentatives of her conversational method. It was said in the village that Miss Aurelia "presided" over her brother's house, and that Sard "ran" it. However, there was no friction between the two. Sard accepted Miss Aurelia with the same devotion that she tended her mother's giant fuchsia, an unnecessary trellised crime of thousands of purple and red flowers, and refrained from sending away the chromos that her father loved. "The--er--telephone, my dear," Miss Aurelia came softly up to Sard's tower room, "sorry to call you but the--er--person--long distance--don't you ever find it confusing?--I--they--she--the operator." "Did you get the name?" asked Sard. "Is it Minga Gerould?" Miss Aurelia wondered if it was, paused, hesitated, then, "Your curtains certainly do need freshening. I never noticed it before. Yes, I think it may be Minga. She--it--sounded husky, long distance, perhaps, I--they seldom speak distinctly; the--er--operator was extraordinarily uncivil,"--Miss Reely pursed her rabbity mouth, "She--I----"