"Well, nobody minds their gossip!" his daughter assured him. "And
for my part I think it's a shame that a girl can't come back home
as simply as that, if she wants to!" she added, boldly.

"Don't talk nonsense!" her father said, mildly. "You think," he
added, reluctantly, "that it wasn't a good thing for her, eh?"

"Well--" Alix began. "She doesn't seem like other married women,"
she said, doubtfully. "And the only thing is, will she ever want
to go back, if she isn't rather--rather coerced. Martin is odd,
you know; he has a kind of stolid, stupid pride. He wrote her
weeks ago and asked her to come, and she wrote back that if he
would find her a cottage, she would; she couldn't go to his
boarding-house, she hated boarding! Martin answered that he would,
some day, and she said to me, 'Oh, now he's cross!' Now, mind
you," Alix broke off vehemently, "I'd change the entire
institution of marriage, if it was me! I'd end all this--"

"Well, we won't go into that!" her father interrupted her,
hastily, for Alix had aired these views before and he was not in
sympathy with them. "And I guess you're right: the child is a
woman now, with a woman's responsibilities," he added. "And her
place is with her husband. They'll have to solve life together, to
learn together. I'll speak to Cherry!"

Alix, watching him walk away, thought that she had never seen Dad
look old before. She saw the shadow on his kind face all the rest
of that day.

It was only the next morning when he opened the question with