a moment they faced each other; then his look cleared as hers had
done, and their hands met as he said boyishly:

"Well, I will be hanged! Jappy Frothingham!"

"Jappy Frothingham!" she echoed joyously. "But I haven't heard that
name for twenty years. And you're the boy whose father was a doctor,
and who helped us build our Indian camp, and who had the frog, and
fell off the roof, and killed the rattlesnake."

"And you're the girl from Washington who could speak French, and who
put that stuff on my freckles and wouldn't let 'em drown the
kittens."

"Oh, yes, yes!" she said, and, their hands still joined, they
laughed like happy children together.

Presently, more gravely, she told him a little of herself, of the
early marriage, and the diplomat husband whose career was so cruelly
cut short by years of hopeless invalidism. Then had come her
father's illness, and years of travel with him, and now she and the
little girls were alone. And in return Barry sketched his own life,
told her a little of Hetty, and his unhappy days in New York, and of
the boy, and finally of the Mail. Her absorbed attention followed
him from point to point.

"And you say that this Rogers owns the newspaper?" she asked
thoughtfully, when the Mail was under discussion.

"Rogers owns it; that's the trouble. Nothing goes into it without