“Not if you’d like me to stay in,” was the reply.  “I have no definite engagement.”

“Oh, no,” said Mr. Lenox, “not at all, not at all,” and as he passed his son on the way out of the room he put out his hand and taking John’s, said, “Good night.”

As John stood for a moment rather taken aback, he heard his father mount the stairs to his room.  He was puzzled by the unexpected and unusual occurrence, but finally concluded that his father, realizing how taciturn they had become of late, wished to resume their former status, and this view was confirmed to his mind by the fact that they had been more companionable than usual that evening, albeit that nothing of any special significance had been said.

As has been stated, a longer interval than usual had elapsed since John’s last visit to Sixty-ninth Street, a fact which had been commented on by Mr. Carling, but not mentioned between the ladies.  When he found himself at that hospitable house on that evening, he was greeted by Miss Blake alone.

“Julius did not come down to-night, and my sister is with him,” she said, “so you will have to put up with my society—­unless you’d like me to send up for Alice.  Julius is strictly en retraite, I should say.”

“Don’t disturb her, I beg,” protested John, laughing, and wondering a bit at the touch of coquetry in her speech, something unprecedented in his experience of her, “if you are willing to put up with my society.  I hope Mr. Carling is not ill?”

They seated themselves as she replied:  “No, nothing serious, I should say.  A bit of a cold, I fancy; and for a fortnight he has been more nervous than usual.  The changes in the weather have been so great and so abrupt that they have worn upon his nerves.  He is getting very uneasy again.  Now, after spending the winter, and when spring is almost at hand, I believe that if he could make up his mind where to go he would be for setting off to-morrow.”

“Really?” said John, in a tone of dismay.

“Quite so,” she replied with a nod.

“But,” he objected, “it seems too late or too early.  Spring may drop in upon us any day.  Isn’t this something very recent?”

“It has been developing for a week or ten days,” she answered, “and symptoms have indicated a crisis for some time.  In fact,” she added, with a little vexed laugh, “we have talked of nothing for a week but the advantages and disadvantages of Florida, California, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia at large; besides St. Augustine, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Aiken, Asheville, Hot Springs, Old Point Comfort, Bermuda, and I don’t know how many other places, not forgetting Atlantic City and Lakewood, and only not Barbadoes and the Sandwich Islands because nobody happened to think of them.  Julius,” remarked Miss Blake, “would have given a forenoon to the discussion of the two latter places as readily as to any of the others.”

“Can’t you talk him along into warm weather?” suggested John, with rather a mirthless laugh.  “Don’t you think that if the weather were to change for good, as it’s likely to do almost any time now, he might put off going till the usual summer flitting?”