engagement. What a miserable thing money was to make so much difference.

"Mrs. Severance--"

"Mr. Billett--"

Louise's friend was certainly attractive. That wonderful red-gold
hair--"setter color" her sister had always called it of her own. She must
write her sister. Mrs. Severance--an odd name. She rather wished, though,
that her face wouldn't turn faintly hard like that sometimes.

"No, Dickie. No chocolate unless your mother says you can have it. No,
Rosalind, if mother says not, you _certainly_ cannot go over and play at
the Rogers',--they have a paralytic grandmother who is very nervous."

Well, that was over. And now, for a few brief instants there would be
quiet and a chance to relax and really see something of Oliver. Mrs. Crowe
started moving slowly towards the door. Ted and Mrs. Severance blocked the
way, talking rather intimately, she thought, for people who had only known
each other a few hours; but then that was the modern way. Then Ted saw her
and seemed to wake up with a jump from whatever mild dream possessed him,
and Mrs. Severance turned toward her.

"It's so _comfortable_ being out here, always," she said very naturally and
kindly, but Mrs. Crowe did not reply at once to the pretty speech. Instead
she flushed deeply and bent over something small and white on the chair
with the dictionary in it that had been next to hers. Jane Ellen had
finally succeeded in taking off her drawers.