“I can’t see any of ’em to-night,” she said resolutely.  “Besides, I want to find out what you meant by what you said in the taxicab before I do anything else.”

“What I meant in the taxicab?” he echoed.  “Oh, Julia!  Julia!”

She frowned, first at the fire, then, turning her head, at Noble.  “You seem to feel reproachful about something,” she observed.

“No, I don’t.  I don’t feel reproachful, Julia.  I don’t know what I feel, but I don’t feel reproachful.”

She smiled faintly.  “Don’t you?  Well, there’s something perhaps you do feel, and that’s hungry.  Will you stay to dinner with me—­if I go and get it?”

“What?”

“You can have dinner with me—­if you want to?  You can stay till ten o’clock—­if you want to?  Wait!” she said, and jumped up and ran out of the room.

Half an hour later she came back and called softly to him from the doorway; and he followed her to the dining-room.

“It isn’t much of a dinner, Noble,” she said, a little tremulously, being for once (though strictly as a cook) genuinely apologetic;—­but the scrambled eggs, cold lamb, salad, and coffee were quite as “much of a dinner” as Noble wanted.  To him everything on that table was hallowed, yet excruciating.

“Let’s eat first and talk afterward,” Julia proposed; but what she meant by “talk” evidently did not exclude interchange of information regarding weather and the health of acquaintances, for she spoke freely upon these subjects, while Noble murmured in response and swallowed a little of the sacred food, but more often swallowed nothing.  Bitterest of all was his thought of what this unexampled seclusion with Julia could have meant to him, were those poisonous violets not at her waist—­for she had put them on again—­and were there no Crum in the South.  Without these fatal obstructions, the present moment would have been to him a bit of what he often thought of as “dream life”; but all its sweetness was a hurt.

“Now we’ll talk!” said Julia, when she had brought him back to the library fire again, and they were seated before it.  “Don’t you want to smoke?” He shook his head dismally, having no heart for what she proposed.  “Well, then,” she said briskly, but a little ruefully, “let’s get to the bottom of things.  Just what did you mean you had ’in black and white’ in your pocket?”

Slowly Noble drew forth the historic copy of The North End Daily Oriole; and with face averted, placed it in her extended hand.

“What in the world!” she exclaimed, unfolding it; and then as its title and statement of ownership came into view, “Oh, yes!  I see.  Aunt Carrie wrote me that Uncle Joseph had given Herbert a printing-press.  I suppose Herbert’s the editor?”

“And that Rooter boy,” Noble said sadly.  “I think maybe your little niece Florence has something to do with it, too.”

“‘Something’ to do with it?  She usually has all to do with anything she gets hold of!  But what’s it got to do with me?”