“David,” remarked the major, “flag the sun, moon and stars in their courses and signal time to reverse a day or a year, but don’t try to turn aside a maker of matches from her machinations.”

David laughed as the major’s wife shook her head at him in gentle reproof, and he asked interestedly: 

“When may we come to call, madam?  I judge the lady is under your roof?”

“Soon, dear.  She is very tired to-day, and I feel sure you will—­”

“Miss Matilda,” called Tempie from the hall, “Miss Phoebe is holdin’ the phone fer you.  She’s at Mis’ Cantrell’s and she wants ter speak with you right away.”

“Wait, wait, don’t answer her right now—­ring her off, Tempie!  If she has trouble getting you, Mrs. Matilda, and you keep her talking I can catch her.  Let me get a good start and then answer.  Good-by!  Keep talking to her!” And with determination in his eyes David took his hurried departure.

“Good-by, good luck—­and good hunting!” called the major after him.

And with the greatest skilfulness Mrs. Buchanan held Phoebe in hand for enough minutes to insure David’s capture before she returned to the library.

“Major,” she said as she rubbed her cheek against his velvet coat sleeve, “why do you suppose Phoebe doesn’t love David?  I can’t understand it.”

“Matilda,” answered the major as he blew a little curl over one of the soft puffs of her white hair, “you were born in a day when women were all run into a love-mold.  They are poured into other assorted fancy shapes in these times, but heat from the right source melts them all the same.  We can trust David’s ardor, I think.”

“Yes, I believe you are right,” she answered judicially, “and Phoebe inherits lovingness from her mother.  I feel that she is more affectionate than she shows, and I just go on and love her anyway.  She lets me do it very often.”

And from the depth of her unsophisticated heart Mrs. Buchanan had evolved a course of action that had gone far in comforting a number of the lonely years through which Phoebe Donelson had waded.  She had been young, and high-spirited and intensely proud when she had begun to fight her own battles in her sixteenth year.  Many loving hands of her mother’s and father’s old friends had been held out to her with a bounty of protection, but she had gone her course and carved her own fortune.  Her social position had made things easy for her in a way and now her society editorship of the leading journal had become a position from which she wielded much power over the gay world that delighted in her wit and beauty, took her autocratic dictums in most cases, and followed her vogue almost absolutely.

Her independence prompted her to live alone in a smart down-town apartment with her old negro mammy, but her affections demanded that she take refuge at all times under the sheltering wings of Mrs. Buchanan, who kept a dainty nest always in readiness for her.