“They are not at home.”

“I knew that, or I should not have come.  I don’t want to make trouble for you, child.”  His voice was infinitely caressing.  “As it happens, I know your grandfather’s Sunday habits, and I met your father and mother on the road going out of town at noon.  I knew they had not come back.”

“How do you know that?”

He smiled down at her.  “I have ways of knowing quite a lot of things.  Especially when they are as vital to me as this few minutes alone with you.”

He bent toward her, as he sat behind the tea table.

“You know how vital this is to me, don’t you?” he said.  “You’re not going to cut me off, are you?”

He stood over her, big, compelling, dominant, and put his hand under her chin.

“I am insane about you,” he whispered, and waited.

Slowly, irresistibly, she lifted her face to his kiss.

CHAPTER XV

On the first day of May, William Wallace Cameron moved his trunk, the framed photograph of his mother, eleven books, an alarm clock and Jinx to the Boyd house.  He went for two reasons.  First, after his initial call at the dreary little house, he began to realize that something had to be done in the Boyd family.  The second reason was his dog.

He began to realize that something had to be done in the Boyd family as soon as he had met Mrs. Boyd.

“I don’t know what’s come over the children,” Mrs. Boyd said, fretfully.  She sat rocking persistently in the dreary little parlor.  Her chair inched steadily along the dull carpet, and once or twice she brought up just as she was about to make a gradual exit from the room.  “They act so queer lately.”

She hitched the chair into place again.  Edith had gone out.  It was her idea of an evening call to serve cakes and coffee, and a strong and acrid odor was seeping through the doorway.  “There’s Dan come home from the war, and when he gets back from the mill he just sits and stares ahead of him.  He won’t even talk about the war, although he’s got a lot to tell.”

“It takes some time for the men who were over to get settled down again, you know.”

“Well, there’s Edith,” continued the querulous voice.  “You’d think the cat had got her tongue, too.  I tell you, Mr. Cameron, there are meals here when if I didn’t talk there wouldn’t be a word spoken.”

Mr. Cameron looked up.  It had occurred to him lately, not precisely that a cat had got away with Edith’s tongue, but that something undeniably had got away with her cheerfulness.  There were entire days in the store when she neglected to manicure her nails, and stood looking out past the fading primrose in the window to the street.  But there were no longer any shrewd comments on the passers-by.

“Of course, the house isn’t very cheerful,” sighed Mrs. Boyd.  “I’m a sick woman, Mr. Cameron.  My back hurts most of the time.  It just aches and aches.”