“She’s not only here, but she’s here to stay!  She’s going to intrench herself here!”

She sent him to the chiffonier to find a fresh handkerchief.  He watched her helplessly for a moment as she dried her eyes.  Then he took her hands and bent over her.

“Won’t you try to see things a little brighter?  It’s all just because you got too tired yesterday.  You oughtn’t to have gone to the convention; and I didn’t know you were going or I should have forbidden it.”

“Well, Marian wanted to go; and we were coming to town anyhow.  And besides, Aunt Sally had taken it into her head to go, too.  She wanted this Garrison girl to see a political convention; I suppose that was the real reason.”

He laughed, gazing down into her tearful face, in which resentment lingered waveringly, as in the faces of children persuaded against their will and parting reluctantly with the solace of tears.

“You must get up for dinner, Hallie.  Your doctors have always insisted that you needed variety and change; and to-morrow we’ll take you up to the lake out of this heat.  We have a good deal to be grateful for, after all, Hallie.  You haven’t any right to feel disappointed in Marian:  she’s the nicest girl in the state, and the prettiest girl you’ll find anywhere.  We ought to be glad she’s so high-spirited and handsome and clever.  College never was for her; she certainly was never for college!  I talked that over with Miss Waring a number of times.  And I don’t believe Aunt Sally thinks less of Marian because she isn’t a better scholar.  Only a small per cent of women go to college, and I’m not sure it’s a good thing.  I’m even a little doubtful about sending Blackford to college; this education business is overdone, and the sooner a boy gets into harness the better.”

Her deep sigh implied that he might do as he liked with his son, now that she had so completely failed with her daughter.

“Aunt Sally is very much interested in Mr. Harwood.  She has put Sylvia’s affairs in his hands.  Could it be possible—­”

He groped for her unexpressed meaning, and seeing that he had not grasped it she clarified it to his masculine intelligence.

“If there are two persons she is interested in, and they understand each other, it’s all so much more formidable.”  And then, seeing that this also was too subtle, she put it flatly:  “What if Harwood should marry Sylvia!”

“Well, that is borrowing trouble!” he cried impatiently.  “Aunt Sally is interested in a great many young people.  She is very fond of Allen Thatcher.  And Allen seems to find Marian’s society agreeable, more so, I fancy, than Harwood does;—­why not speculate along that line?  It’s as plausible as the other.”

“Oh, that boy!  That’s something we must guard against, Morton; that is quite impossible.”

“I dare say it is,” he replied.  “But not more unlikely than that Harwood will marry this Sylvia who worries you so unnecessarily.”