"Both of my front teeth are all wiggly," whispered the child, feeling that something out of the ordinary was demanded of her in a social way. "I can wiggle them with my tongue." "Can you, darling? How remarkable! Never mind; you'll soon have some nice new ones that won't wiggle." Doris giggled rapturously. "We're going to have ice-cream for dinner," was her next confidence. "But I'm not going to act s'prised when Celia brings it in. We've all promised mother we won't, even if it's pink. I hope it'll be pink; don't you?" "Doris," warned her mother, "you're talking too much." "Oh, do let the dear little soul say anything she likes to me, Betty!" protested Miss Tripp. "If you knew how I enjoyed it!" Doris nestled closer to the visitor, eyeing her mother with the naughtily demure expression of a kitten stealing cream. "I was going to[Pg 74] tell you something funny," she said, "but I can't think what it was. I guess I'll remember when we're eating dinner." [Pg 74] "The artless prattle of a child is so refreshing, you know," continued Miss Tripp, "after all the empty conventionalities of society. I simply love to hear the little darlings—especially yours, dear Betty. You are bringing them up so beautifully!" [Pg 75] [Pg 75] VIII When Mr. George Hickey rang the bell at the door of the modest Brewster residence that night, it was with the pleasant anticipation of a simple, but well-cooked dinner, of the sort a bachelor, condemned by his solitary estate to prolonged residence in that semi-public caravansary known as the American boarding-house, seldom enjoys. He was very far indeed from a knowledge of the fact that he was in the oft-quoted position of the man in a boat on the hither side of the great rapids of Niagara. Mr. Hickey had allowed himself to be drawn into feeling a somewhat uncommon interest in Miss Evelyn Tripp, it is true; but he attributed this feeling wholly to the fact that he had known Miss Tripp when he was a tall, awkward boy of twenty and she was a rosy, fascinating miss of sixteen. She had laughed at him slily in those days, and he had resented her mirth with[Pg 76] all the secret and hence futile agony which marks the intercourse of the awkward youth with the
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