"Sure, Mater!" he said, calmly. "How d'ye do, Caroline? 'Lo, Steve!"

The quartette shook hands. Mrs. Dunn sank creakingly into a chair and
gazed about the room. Malcolm strolled to the window and looked out.
Stephen followed and stood beside him.

"My dear," said Mrs. Dunn, addressing Caroline, "how are you getting on?
How are your nerves? Is all the dreadful 'settling' over?"

"Very nearly, thank goodness."

"That's a mercy. I should certainly have been here yesterday to help you
in superintending and arranging and so on, but I was suffering from one
of my 'hearts,' and you know what THEY are."

Everyone who knew Mrs. Corcoran Dunn was acquainted with her "hearts."
The attacks came, so she was accustomed to explain, from an impaired
valve, and "some day"--she usually completed the sentence with upturned
eyes and a resigned upward wave of the hand.

Her son turned from the window.

"I say, Mother," he explained, wearily, "I do wish you wouldn't speak of
your vital organs in the plural. Anyone would imagine you were a sort
of freak, like the two-headed boy at the circus. It's positively
distressing."

Stephen laughed. He admired young Dunn immensely. Mrs. Dunn sighed.

"Don't, Malcolm, dear," she pleaded. "You sound so unfeeling. One not