But there was no consecutive talk about anything after they all were joyfully gathered in their ugly, commonplace boarding-house bedroom.  They loosened collars and belts, washed their perspiring and dusty faces, and brushed hair, to the tune of a magpie chatter.  Sylvia did not realize that she and her father were the main sources of this volubility, she did not realize how she had missed his exuberance, she only knew that she felt a weight lifted from her heart.  She had been telling him with great enjoyment of the comic opera they had seen, as she finished putting the hairpins into her freshly smoothed hair, and turned, a pin still in her mouth, in time to be almost abashed by the expression in his eyes as he suddenly drew his wife to him.

“Jove!  Barbara!” he cried, half laughing, but with a quiver in his voice, “it’s hell to be happily married!  A separation is—­well, never mind about it.  I came along anyhow!  And now I’m here I’ll go to see Vic of course.”

“No, you won’t,” said Judith promptly.  “She’s gone back.  To get Arnold out of a scrape.”

Mrs. Marshall explained further, and incidentally touched upon her sister-in-law’s views of the relation between expensive boys’ schools and private tutors.  Her dryly humorous version of this set her husband off in a great mirthful roar, to which Sylvia, after a moment of blankness, suddenly joined a burst of her own clear laughter.  At the time she had seen nothing funny in Aunt Victoria’s statement, but she was now immensely tickled to remember Aunt Victoria’s Olympian certainty of herself and her mother’s grave mask of serious consideration of the idea.  Long after her father had stopped laughing, she still went on, breaking out into delighted giggles.  Her new understanding of the satire back of her mother’s quiet eyes, lent to Aunt Victoria’s golden calm the quaint touch of caricature which made it self-deceived complacency.  At the recollection she sent up rocket after rocket of schoolgirl laughter.

Her mother, absorbed in conscientious anxiety about Sylvia’s development, and deeply disappointed by the result of the visit to the hospital, ignored this laughter, nor did Sylvia at all guess that she was laughing away half the spell which Aunt Victoria had cast about her.  When they went down to their supper of watery creamed potatoes, and stewed apricots in thick saucers, she was in such good humor that she ate this unappetizing fare with no protest.

“Now, folks,” said Professor Marshall, after supper, “we have to go home tomorrow early, so we ought to have one more fling tonight.  While I was waiting for you to come back this afternoon, I looked up what Chicago has to offer in the way of flings, and this is what I found.  Here, Barbara,” he took a tiny envelope out of his upper waistcoat pocket, “are two tickets for the symphony orchestra.  By the greatest of luck they’re giving a special concert for some charity or other, a beautiful program;