LITMIR.BIZ

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word for it!" repined the unhappy lady, upon whose nearly knee-length stays Heloise now was tugging like a sailor at a capstan. "Louise coolly announces—I had her letter yesterday—that she is not returning to Miss Mayhew's school; that she is coming to remain with me for good."

      "Well?" said Laura, murdering the smile that strove to break through her visible mask.

      "'Well?'" wailed Mrs. Treharne. "Is that all you have to say—'well'? Can't you see how impossible, how utterly out of the question, how——"

      "Her quitting school now, you mean?" said Laura. "Really, I think you should be pleased. Her announcement shows that Louise is a woman—a girl of nineteen who has spent nearly four years at a modern finishing school no longer is a young person, but a woman—that she is a woman with a sense of humor. It is very human, very indicative of the possession of the humorous sense, to tire of school. I did that, myself, a full year before I was through. All of the king's horses could not have dragged me back, either. I hated the thought of graduation day—the foolish, fluttery white frocks, the platitudes of visitors, the moisty weepiness of one's women relatives, the sophomoric speechifying of girls who were hoydens the day before and would be worse hoydens the day after, the showing off of one's petty, inconsequential 'accomplishments'—I loathed the thought of the whole fatuous performance. And so I packed and left a full year in advance of it, resolved not to be involuntarily drawn into the solemn extravaganza of 'being graduated.' That, no doubt, is Louise's idea. She is a girl with a merry heart. You should be glad of that, Antoinette."

      Laura was simply sparring with the hope of getting her friend's mind off her problem. She knew very well the nature of the problem; none better. The idea of a girl just out of school being plumped into such an environment as that enveloping the Treharne household perhaps was even more unthinkable to Laura that it was to the girl's mother, a woman who had permitted her sensibilities to become grievously blunted with what she termed the "widening of her horizon." But Laura, not yet ready with advice to meet so ticklish a situation, sought, woman-like, to divert the point of the problem by seizing upon one of its quite minor ramifications. Of course it was not her fault that she failed.

      "Laura," said Mrs. Treharne, dismissing her maid with a gesture and fumblingly assembling the materials on her dressing table wherewith to accomplish an unassisted facial make-up, "your occasional assumption of stupidity is the least becoming thing you do. Why fence with me? It is ridiculous, unfriendly, irritating." She daubed at her pale wispy eyebrows with a smeary pencil and added with a certain hardness: "You know perfectly well why I dread the thought of Louise coming here."

      Laura, at bay, unready for a pronouncement, took another ditch of evasiveness.

      "I wonder," she said in an intended tone of detachment, "if you are afraid she has become a bluestocking? Or maybe a frump? Or, worse still, what you call one of the anointed smugs? Such things—one or other of them, at any rate—are to be expected of girls just out of school, my dear. Louise will conquer her disqualification, if she have one. Her imagination will do that much for her. And of course she has imagination."

      "She has eyes, too, no doubt," said Mrs. Treharne, drily. "And you know how prying, penetrating the eyes of a girl of nineteen are. You know still better how poorly this—this ménage of mine can stand such inspection; the snooping—wholly natural snooping, I grant you—of a daughter nearly a head taller than I am, whom, nevertheless, I scarcely know. Frankly, I don't know Louise at all. I should be properly ashamed to acknowledge that; possibly I am. Moreover, I believe I am a bit afraid of her."

      Laura assumed a musing posture and thus had an excuse for remaining silent.

      "Additionally," went on Mrs. Treharne, a little hoarsely, "a woman, in considering her daughter's welfare, must become a trifle smug herself, no matter how much she may despise smugness in its general use and application. What sort of a place is this as a home for Louise? I am speaking to you as an old friend. I am in a fiendish predicament. Of course you see that. And I can't see the first step of a way out of it. Can you?"

      "For one thing," said Laura, mischievously and with eyes a-twinkle, "you might permanently disperse your zoo."

      Mrs. Treharne laughed harshly.

      "One must know somebody," she said, deftly applying the rouge rabbit's-foot. "One can't live in a cave. My own sort banished me. I am declassée. Shall I sit and twiddle my thumbs? At least the people of my 'zoo,' as you call it, are clever. You'll own that."

      "They are freaks—impossible, buffoonish, baboonish freaks," replied Laura, more earnestly than she had yet spoken. "You know I am not finical; but if this raffish crew of yours are 'Bohemians,' as they declare themselves to be—which in itself is banal enough, isn't it?—then give me the sleek, smug inhabitants of Spotless Town!"

      "You rave," said Mrs. Treharne, drearily. "Let my zoo-crew alone. We don't agree upon the point."

      "I thought you had your queer people—your extraordinary Sunday evening parties—I came perilously near saying rough-houses, Tony—in mind in bemoaning Louise's return home," said Laura, yawning ever so slightly.

      "Oh, I'd thought of that, of course," said Mrs. Treharne, artistically adding a sixteenth of an inch of length to the corners of her eyes with the pencil. "But my raffish crew, as you call them, wouldn't harm her. She might even become used to them in time. She hasn't had time to form prejudices yet, it is to be hoped. You purposely hit all around the real mark. Louise is nineteen. And you know the uncanny side-lines of wisdom girls pick up at finishing schools nowadays. Since you maliciously force me to mention it point-blank, in Heaven's name what will this daughter of mine think of—of Mr. Judd?"

      "Now we are at the heart of the matter," answered Laura. "Heart, did I say? Fancy 'Pudge' with a heart!" There was little mirth in her laugh.

      "You must not call him that, even when you are alone with me, Laura," said Mrs. Treharne, petulantly. "I am in deadly fear that some time or other he will catch you calling him that. You know how mortally sensitive he is about his—his bulk."

      "Well might he be," said Laura, drily enough. "Is there any particular reason why your daughter should have to meet Judd? Except very occasionally, I mean?"

      "How can it be avoided?" asked Mrs. Treharne, helplessly. "Hasn't he the run of the house? You don't for an instant suppose that, even if I implored him, he would forego any of his—his privileges here?"

      "I am not so imbecile as to suppose any such a thing," said Laura, with a certain asperity. "But the man might exhibit a bit of common decency. He knows that Louise is coming?"

      "I haven't told him," said Mrs. Treharne, fluttering to her feet from the dressing table. "You will hook me, Laura? I don't want to call Heloise. She only pretends that she doesn't understand English, and she knows too much already. No, I haven't told him yet. He resents the idea of my having a daughter, you know. He will be here directly to take me out in the car. I shall tell him when we are going through the Park. Then nobody but the chauffeur and I will hear him growl. I know in advance every word that he will say," and the distraught woman looked wan even under her liberal rouge.

      Laura impulsively placed an arm around her friend's shoulder.

      "Tony," she said, gravely, "why don't you show the brute the door?"

      "Because it is his own door—you know that," said Mrs. Treharne, her eyes a little misty.

      "Then walk out of it," said Laura. "This isn't the right sort of thing. I don't pose as a saint. But I could not endure this. Come with me. Let Louise join you with me. You know how welcome you are. I have plenty—more than plenty. You shouldn't have permitted Judd to refuse to let you continue to receive the allowance George Treharne provided for Louise. That wasn't fair to yourself. It was more unfair to your daughter. You shouldn't have allowed her to get her education with Judd's money. She is bound to find it out. She would be no woman at all if that knowledge doesn't cut her to the quick. But this is beside the mark. I have plenty. She is a dear, sweet, honest girl, and she is entitled to her chance in the world. I am sure I don't need to tell you that. What chance has she in this house? The doors that are worth while are closed

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