urgently. "It's quite light."

But Mrs. Field could summon no appetite.

"I see you are anxious about him," Mrs. Davenport continued after
breakfast. "You are surely not afraid his story will fail to interest
us?"

"No, it is not that."

"It can't be that he has given up the one he expected to tell us and can
think of no other?"

"Oh, no; he is going to tell that one."

"And you don't like his choice?"

"He won't tell me what it is!" Mrs. Davenport put down her embroidery.
"Then, Ethel," she laid with severity, "the fault is yours. When I had
been five years married, Mr. Davenport confided everything to me."

"So does Richard. Except when I particularly ask him."

"There it is, Ethel. You let him see that you want to know."

"But I do want to know. Richard has had such interesting experiences, so
many of them. And I do so want him to tell a thoroughly nice one. There's
the one when he saved a man from drowning just below our house, the
second summer, and the man turned out to be a burglar and broke into the
pantry that very night, and Richard caught him in the dark with just as