“Papa!”

“Oh, some business detained him in the City.”

“What has happened to papa?” demanded Charlotte, in a shrill voice, and it was again as if she were unconsciously accusing Anderson.  When a heart becomes confident of love, it is filled with wonder at any evil mischance permitted, and accuses love, even the love of God.  “What has happened to papa?  Where is he?” she demanded again.  And it was then that Mrs. Anderson, unseen by either of them, stood in the doorway with an enormous purple-flowered wrapper surging over her nightgown.

“Hush, dear!” whispered Anderson.  “I am sure nothing has happened.”

“Why are you sure?”

“If anything had happened I should have heard of it.  I came out on the last train myself.  If there had been an accident I should certainly have heard.”

“Would you?”

“I surely should have.  Don’t, dear.  Your father has just been detained by business.”

“Then why didn’t papa telegraph?”

“He did not get it in the office in season.  The office closes at half-past eight,” said Anderson, lying cheerfully.

“Does it?”

“Of course!  There is nothing for you to worry about.  Now I’ll tell you what we will do.  My mother is awake.  I will speak to her, and you must go straight to bed, and go to sleep, and in the morning your father will be along on the first train.  He must have been as much worried as you.”

“Poor papa,” said Charlotte.

“So you were all alone in the house, and you came down here all alone at this time,” said Anderson, in a tone which his mother had never heard.  But it was then that she spoke.

“Didn’t her father come home?” she asked.

When the girl turned like a flash and saw her she seemed to realize for the first time that she had been, and was, doing something out of the wonted.  A great, burning blush surged all over her.  She shrank away from the man who held her.  She cowered before the other woman.

“No, papa didn’t come,” she stammered, “and—­I didn’t know what to do, and I came here.”

“You did quite right, you precious child,” said Mrs. Anderson, suddenly, in a voice of the tenderest authority.  She held out her arms and Charlotte fled to them.  Mrs. Anderson looked over the girl’s head at her son with the oddest and most inexplicable reproach.  “You go up and see if the heat is turned on in that little room out of mine,” she commanded, “and then you go into the kitchen and see if you can’t find the milk, and set some on the stove to warm.  You can pour a little hot water in it to hurry it.  If the fire isn’t good, open the dampers.  And, Randolph, you get my hot-water bag out of my bed, and fill it from the tea-kettle—­that water will be hotter than the bath-room, this time of night—­and you bring it right up; be as quick as you can.”  Then all in the same breath she was comforting Charlotte.  “Your father is all right, dear child.  Don’t