“Isn’t life queer!” she thought.  “Now why did he save this clipping?”

She read the clipping and enjoyed it.  Wally, watching from his chair, saw the smile which passed over her face.

“She’ll warm up some day,” he confidently told himself, with that bluntness of thought which comes to us all at times.  “See how she flared up because I danced with Helen.  Maybe if I made her jealous...”

At the desk Mary picked up another paper—­an old cable.  She read it, re-read it, and quietly folded it again; but for all her calmness the colour slowly mounted to her cheeks, as the recollection of odd words and phrases arose to her mind.

“Wally,” she said in her quietest voice, “I’m going to ask you a question, but first you must promise to answer me truly.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die!”

“Are you ready?”

“Quite ready.”

“Then did you ever hear of any one in our family named Paul?”

“Y-yes—­”

“Who was he?”

It was some time before he told the story, but trust a girl to make a man speak when she wishes it!  He softened the recital in every possible way, but trust a girl again to read between the lines when she wants to!

“And didn’t he ever come back?” she asked.

“No; you see he couldn’t very well.  There was an accident out West—­somebody killed—­anyhow, he was blamed for it.  Queer, isn’t it?” he broke off, trying to relieve the subject.  “The Kaiser can start a war and kill millions.  That’s glory.  But if some poor devil loses his head—­”

Mary wasn’t through yet.

“You say he’s dead!” she asked.

“Oh, yes, years ago.  He must have been dead—­oh, let me see—­about fifteen or twenty years, I guess.”

“Poor dad!” thought Mary that night.  “What he must have gone through!  I’ll bet he didn’t think that love was the only thing in life.  And—­that other one,” she hesitated, “who was ‘wild after the girls,’ Wally says, and finally ran off with one—­I’ll bet he didn’t think so, either—­before he got through—­to say nothing of the poor thing who went with him.  But dead fifteen or twenty years—­that’s the queerest part.”

She found the cable again.  It was dated Rio Janeiro—­

“Gods sake cable two hundred dollars wife children sick desperate next week too late.”

It was signed “Paul” and—­the point to which Mary’s attention was constantly returning—­it wasn’t fifteen or twenty years ago that this appeal had been received by her father.

The date of the cable was scarcely three years old.

CHAPTER XIV

For days Mary could think of little else, but as week followed week, her thoughts merged into memories—­memories that were stored away and stirred in their hiding places less and less often.

“Dad knew best,” she finally told herself.  “He bore it in silence all those years, so it wouldn’t worry me, and I’m not going to start now.  Perhaps—­he’s dead, too.  Anyhow,” she sternly repeated, “I’m not going to worry.  I’ve seen enough of worry to start doing that.”