“Why, don’t you see?  Don’t you see it means everything to him to have stood by me in this, and now to clear it all up between us!  Don’t you see that it makes him one of us, in a way?  He’s done his adored father a real service—­”

“And his adored mother, too?”

His tone brought the happy tears to her eyes.

“And the favor?” he said presently.

“Oh!  Well, you see, I’m supposed to be ’fessing up the whole horrible business, Carey, and in a day or two I want you to thank him, just in some general way,—­you’ll know how!—­for looking out for me so well while you were away.  Will you?”

“I will,” he promised slowly.

“He’s coming downstairs—­so good-by!” said she.  She came around the table to kiss him, and, suddenly smitten with a sense of youth and well-being and the glory of the spring morning, she added a little wistfully: 

“I wonder what I’ve done to be so happy, Carey—­I wonder what I’ve ever done to be so loved?”

“I wonder!” said Carey, smiling.

MISS MIX, KIDNAPPER

I

“Well, he has done it now, confound his nerve!” said Anthony Fox, Sr., in a tone of almost triumphant fury.  He spread the loosely written sheets of a long letter on the breakfast table.  “Here I am, just out of a sick-bed!” he pursued fretfully; “just home from a month’s idling abroad, and now I’ll have to go away out to California to lick some sense into that young fool!”

“For Heaven’s sake, Tony, don’t get yourself all worked up!” said handsome, stately Mrs. Fox, much more concerned for father than for son.  She sighed resignedly as she folded a flattering request from her club for an address entitled, “Do We Forget Our Maids?” and gave him her full attention.  “Read me the letter, dear,” said she, placidly.

“Of course I always knew some woman would get hold of him,” said Anthony, Sr., fumbling blindly for his mouth with a bit of toast, his eyes still on the letter; “but, by George, this sounds like Charlie Ross!”

“Woman!” repeated Mrs. Fox, with a relieved laugh.  “Buddy’s in love, is he?  Don’t worry, Tony, it won’t last!  Of all boys in the world he’s the least likely to be foolish that way!”

“Of all boys in the world he’s the kind that is easiest taken in!” said his father, dryly, securing the toast at last with a savage snap.  “H-m—­she’s his landlady!  Keeps fancy fowls and takes boarders—­ha!  Says they rather hope to be married in June.  This has quite a settled tone to it, for Buddy.  I don’t like the look of it!”

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Fox, with dawning uneasiness.  “You don’t mean to say he considers himself seriously engaged?  At twenty!  And to his landlady, too—­I never heard such nonsense!  Buddy’s in no position to marry.  Who is the girl, anyway?”

“Girl is good!” said the reader, bitterly.  “She’s thirty-two!”