"Was he very angry?" asked Del.

"He wasn't angry at all," her brother replied. "I'd much rather he had
been." Then, after a pause, he added: "I thought the trouble between us
was that, while I understood him, he didn't understand me. Now I know
that he has understood me but that I don't understand him"--and, after a
pause--"or myself."




CHAPTER III

MRS. WHITNEY INTERVENES


As Hiram had always been silent and seemingly abstracted, no one but
Ellen noted the radical change in him. She had brought up her children in
the old-fashioned way--her thoughts, and usually her eyes, upon them all
day, and one ear open all night. When she no longer had them to guard,
she turned all this energy of solicitude to her husband; thus the
passionate love of her youth was having a healthy, beautiful old age. The
years of circumventing the easily roused restiveness of her spirited boy
and girl had taught her craft; without seeming to be watching Hiram, no
detail of his appearance or actions escaped her.

"There's mighty little your pa don't see," had been one of her stock
observations to the children from their earliest days. "And you needn't
flatter yourselves he don't care because he don't speak." Now she noted