of the house, was a strong recommendation that Rose stay quietly within
doors and keep warm.

The girl might have palmed off her own inclination as an example of
filial obedience, but she didn't.

"I was going to, anyway," she said. "Home and fireside for mine to-day."

Ordinarily, the gale would have tempted her. It was such good fun to
lean up against it and force your way through, while it tugged at your
skirts and hair and slapped your face.

But to-day, the warmest corner of the sitting-room lounge, the quiet of
the house, deserted except for Inga in the kitchen, engaged in the
principal sporting event of her domestic routine--the weekly baking; the
fact that she needn't speak to a soul for three hours, a detective story
just wild enough to make little intervals in the occupation of doing
nothing at all--presented an ideal a hundred per cent. perfect.

She hadn't meant to go to sleep, having already slept away half the
morning, but the author's tactics in the detective story were so
flagrantly unfair, he was so manifestly engaged trying to make trouble
for his poor anemic characters instead of trying to solve their
perplexities, that presently she tossed the book aside and began
dreaming one of her own in which the heroine got put off a street-car in
the opening chapter.

The telephone bell roused her once or twice, far enough to observe that
Inga was attending to it, so when the front door-bell rang, she left
that to Inga, too--didn't even sit up and swing her legs off the couch