temperament; but how seldom it goes with the practical! Poor Sam had just enough talent to tempt him away from a useful business life, and not enough to make his family comfortable. How I do hope his daughter hasn't inherited his happy-go-lucky, selfish nature; for there is that girl for us to deal with, Calvin." Martha Lacey flashed an anxious look at her vis-a-vis. 

 "Sam's girl, yes," returned the lawyer. His face had become expressionless. His shoulders had humped forward. He reminded his companion of some animal who instinctively draws itself together to avoid the enemy's detection. So a tree-toad clings against the bark. So a porcupine rolls itself into a ball. To Miss Lacey the latter simile would have been more appealing. She dreaded the arrows he could launch. 

 "Sam's girl, yes; but Laura's girl, too, Calvin." 

 "Well?" he responded non-committally, and his face and figure seemed incapable of moving a muscle. 

 "I couldn't go 'way out to Illinois to the funeral even if I'd known in time," said Miss Lacey plaintively. "I couldn't think of affording it, and I wrote Sylvia so." 

 "Then you have been in correspondence with her?" asked the lawyer, and his cold manner appeared to seize an advantage. 

 "No, I haven't," responded Martha quickly. "It wasn't till Sam's life was despaired of that she wrote to me, as in duty bound. Of course I answered her; but do you believe, Calvin Trent, before my letter had time to get there—I wasn't very prompt—she wrote again, and said it was all over and some friends were paying her expenses to Boston, and she'd be here on Tuesday." 

 Miss Lacey leaned back in her chair and looked desperately for a sign of life in the stony countenance before her. 

 "Well?" responded the judge, after a pause. 

 "Well, what?" she retorted, in a tense voice. "I've no doubt she's as slipshod—as easy-going, I should say, as her father. The idea of her not waiting for advice from her relatives before she took such a step and came to a strange land uninvited; but she's our flesh and blood, Calvin, and she's in her teens yet. What are you going to do about it?" 

 Judge Trent was humped over more defensively than ever. Miss Lacey's nervous tension could not endure the prolonging of the silence with which he met the question. 

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