to the station and meet the children," she said, rising.

"I'm afraid you are a very foolish woman," Sarah Maitland said;--
and Mrs. Richie sat down. "Mr. Ferguson will bring 'em here.
Anyway, this clock is half an hour slow. They'll be here before
you could get to the station." She chuckled, slyly. Her sense of
humor was entirely rudimentary, and never got beyond the
practical joke. "I've been watching you look at that clock," she
said; then she looked at it herself and frowned. She was wasting
a good deal of time over this business of the children. But in
spite of herself, glancing at the graceful figure sitting in
tense waiting at the fireside, she smiled. "You are a pretty
creature," she said; and Mrs. Richie started and blushed like a
girl. "If Robert Ferguson had any sense!" she went on, and paused
to pick up a dropped stitch. "Queer fellow, isn't he?" Mrs.
Richie had nothing to say. "Something went wrong with him when he
was young, just after he left college. Some kind of a crash.
Woman scrape, I suppose. Have you ever noticed that women make
all the trouble in the world? Well, he never got over it. He told
me once that Life wouldn't play but one trick on him. 'We're
always going to sit down on a chair--and Life pulls it from under
us,' he said. 'It won't do that to me twice.' He's not given to
being confidential, but that put me on the track. And now he's
got Elizabeth on his hands."

"She's a dear little thing," Mrs. Richie said, smiling; "though I
confess she always fights shy of me; she doesn't like me, I'm
afraid."

Mrs. Maitland lifted an eyebrow. "She's a corked-up volcano.