“Amy White’s mother would look awfully funny in a gown like Mamma’s,” said Adelaide.

“I suppose that is why she plays dominoes with Amy,” said Maida in her old voice.

“Oh, don’t talk any more, Maida, I want to go to sleep,” said Adelaide pettishly, but she was not in the least sleepy.  She wished to return to the air-castle in which she had been having sweet converse with Jim Carr.  This air-castle was the abode of innocence, but it was not yet time for its building at all.  It was such a little childish creature who lay curled up under the coverlid strewn with rosebuds that the gates of any air-castle of life and love, and knowledge, however innocent and ignorant, should have been barred against her, perhaps with dominoes.

However, she entered in, her soft cheeks burning, and her pulse tingling, and saw the strange light through its fairy windows, and her sister also entered her air-castle, and all the time their mother was sailing across the North River toward the pier where her husband waited.  She kept one gloved hand upon the fold of her gown, ready to clutch it effectually clear of the dirty deck when the pier was reached.  When she was in the taxicab with Wilbur, she thought again of Von Rosen.  “Dominie von Rosen made a mistake,” said she, “and called up the wrong number.  He wanted Doctor Sturtevant, and he got me.”  Then she repeated the message.  “What do you suppose he was doing with a fainting Syrian girl in his house?” she ended.

A chuckle shook the dark bulk in its fur lined coat at her side.  “The question is why the Syrian girl chose Von Rosen’s house to faint in,” said he lightly.

“Oh, don’t be funny, Wilbur,” said Margaret.  “Have you seen the dining-room?  How does it look?”

“I thought it beautiful, and I am sure you will like it,” said Wilbur Edes in the chastened tone which he commonly used toward his wife.  He had learned long ago that facetiousness displeased her, and he lived only to please her, aside from his interest in his profession.  Poor Wilbur Edes thought his wife very wonderful, and watched with delight the hats doffed when she entered the hotel lift like a little beruffled yellow canary.  He wished those men could see her later, when the canary resemblance had altogether ceased, when she would look tall and slender and lithe in her clinging yellow gown with the great yellow stone gleaming in her corsage.

For some reason Margaret Edes held her husband’s admiration with a more certain tenure because she could not be graceful when weighed down with finery.  The charm of her return to grace was a never-ending surprise.  Wilbur Edes loved his wife more comfortably than he loved his children.  He loved them a little uneasily.  They were unknown elements to him, and he sometimes wished that he had more time at home, to get them firmly fixed in his comprehension.  Without the slightest condemnation of his wife, he had never regarded her as a woman in whom the maternal