“The skinned place?” Josephine’s tone was perfectly innocent, and her fingers were busy with the wide, black bow which becomingly tied the end of the braid.

“Phenie!  If you hadn’t a sprained ankle, and weren’t such a dear in every other respect, I’d shake you!  It isn’t fair.  Because Ford was pounced upon by a lot of men—­sixteen, Chester told me—­”

“I suppose he counted the dead after the battle, and told Ches truthfully—­”

“Phenie, that sounds catty!  When you get down on a man, you’re perfectly unmerciful, and Ford doesn’t deserve it.  You shouldn’t judge men by the narrow, Eastern standards.  I know it’s awful for a man to drink and fight.  But Ford wasn’t altogether to blame.  They got him to drinking and,” she went on with her voice lowered to the pitch at which women are wont to relate horrid, immoral things, “—­I wouldn’t be surprised if they put something in it!  Such things are done; I’ve heard of men being drugged and robbed and all sorts of things.  And I’m just as much of an advocate for temperance as you are, Phenie—­and I think Ford was just right to fight those men.  There are,” she declared wisely, “circumstances where it’s perfectly just and right for a man to fight.  I can imagine circumstances under which Chester would be justified in fighting—­”

“In case sixteen men should hold his nose and pour drugged whisky down his throat?” Phenie inquired mildly, curling the end of her braid over a slim forefinger.

Mrs. Kate made an inarticulate sound which might almost be termed a snort, and walked from the room with her head well up and a manner which silently made plain to the onlooker that she might say many things which would effectually crush her opponent, but was magnanimously refraining from doing so.

Josephine did not even pay her the tribute of looking at her; she had at that moment heard a step upon the porch, and she was leaning to one side so that she might see who was coming into the dining-room.  As it happened, it was Mason himself.  Miss Josephine immediately lost interest in the arrival and took to tracing with her finger the outline of a Japanese lady with a startling coiffure and an immense bow upon her spine, who was simpering at a lotus bed on Josephine’s kimono.  She did not look up until some one stepped upon the porch again.

This time it was Ford, and he stopped and painstakingly removed the last bit of soil from his boot-soles upon the iron scraper which was attached to one end of the top step; when that duty had been performed, he paid further tribute to the immaculate house he was about to enter, by wiping his feet upon a mat placed with mathematical precision upon the porch, at the head of the steps.  Josephine watched the ceremonial, and studied Ford’s profile, and did not lay her head back upon the cushion behind her until he disappeared into the dining-room.  Then she stared at a colored-crayon portrait of Buddy which hung on the wall opposite, and her eyes were the eyes of one who sees into the past.