run into a love-mold. They are poured into other assorted fancy shapes in
these times, but heat from the right source melts them all the same. We
can trust David's ardor, I think."

"Yes, I believe you are right," she answered judicially, "and Phoebe
inherits lovingness from her mother. I feel that she is more affectionate
than she shows, and I just go on and love her anyway. She lets me do it
very often."

And from the depth of her unsophisticated heart Mrs. Buchanan had evolved
a course of action that had gone far in comforting a number of the lonely
years through which Phoebe Donelson had waded. She had been young, and
high-spirited and intensely proud when she had begun to fight her own
battles in her sixteenth year. Many loving hands of her mother's and
father's old friends had been held out to her with a bounty of
protection, but she had gone her course and carved her own fortune. Her
social position had made things easy for her in a way and now her society
editorship of the leading journal had become a position from which she
wielded much power over the gay world that delighted in her wit and
beauty, took her autocratic dictums in most cases, and followed her vogue
almost absolutely.

Her independence prompted her to live alone in a smart down-town
apartment with her old negro mammy, but her affections demanded that she
take refuge at all times under the sheltering wings of Mrs. Buchanan, who
kept a dainty nest always in readiness for her.

The tumultuous wooing of David Kildare had been going on since her early
teens under the delighted eyes of the major, who in turn both furthered
and hindered the suit by his extremely philosophical advice.