"Oh," said Missy, desperately tongue-tied and ill-at-ease.

For a long second it endured portentously still in the room and in
the world without; then like a sharp thunder-clap out of a summer
sky, a door slammed upstairs. There was a sound of someone running
down the steps, and Missy glimpsed Mr. Hackett going out the front
door, banging the screen after him.

At the last noise, old Mrs. Greenleaf's shoulders stiffened as if
under a lash. But she turned quietly and said:

"Thank you so much for the flowers, Missy. I'll give them to her
after a while, when she's better. And you can see her to-morrow."

It was the politest of dismissals. Missy, having remembered the
pattern, hurriedly got it and ran home. She had seen a suspicion of
tears in old Mrs. Greenleaf's eyes. It was as upsetting as though
the bronze Winged Victory on the parlour mantel should begin to
weep.

All that afternoon Missy sought solitude. She refused to play
croquet with Kitty Allen when that beautiful and most envied friend
appeared. When Kitty took herself home, offended, Missy went out to
the remote summerhouse, relieved. She looked back, now, on her
morning's careless happiness as an old man looks back on the heyday
of his youth.

Heavy with sympathy, non-comprehension and fear, she brooded over
these dark, mysterious hints about the handsome Cleveland man; over