Chapter 9 - Page 2

pause; and then--"Isn't that the girl who set 'em all by the ears yesterday?" asked the young man, pointing to the morning paper. "They say she's a good-looker."

Madam Weatherstone rose from the table in some agitation. "I must say I am very sorry, Viva, that you should have been so--precipitate! This young woman cannot be competent to manage a house like this--to say nothing of her scandalous ideas. Mrs. Halsey was--to my mind--perfectly satisfactory. I shall miss her very much." She swept out with an unanswerable air.

"So shall I," muttered Mat, under his breath, as he strolled after her; "unless the new one's equally amiable."

Viva Weatherstone watched them go, and stood awhile looking after the well-built, well-dressed, well-mannered but far from well-behaved young man.

"I don't _know_," she said to herself, "but I do feel--think--imagine--a good deal. I'm sure I hope not! Anyway--it's new life to have that girl in the house."

That girl had undertaken what she described to Ross as "a large order--a very large order."

"It's the hardest thing I ever undertook," she wrote him, "but I think I can do it; and it will be a tremendous help. Mrs. Weatherstone's a brick--a perfect brick! She seems to have been very unhappy--for ever so long--and to have submitted to her domineering old mother-in-law just because she didn't care enough to resist. Now she's got waked up all of a sudden--she says it was my paper at the club--more likely my awful example, I think! and she fired her old housekeeper--I don't know what for--and rushed me in.

"So here I am. The salary is good, the work is excellent training, and I guess I can hold the place. But the old lady is a terror, and the young man--how you would despise that Johnny!"

The home letters she now received were rather amusing. Ross, sternly patient, saw little difference in her position. "I hope you will enjoy your new work," he wrote, "but personally I should prefer that you did not--so you might give it up and come home sooner. I miss you as you can well imagine. Even when you were here life was hard enough--but now!--

"I had a half offer for the store the other day, but it fell through. If I could sell that incubus and put the money into a ranch--fruit, hens, anything--then we could all live on it; more cheaply, I think; and I could find time for some research work I have in mind. You remember that guinea-pig experiment I want so to try?"

Diantha remembered and smiled sadly. She was not much interested in guinea-pigs and their potential capacities, but she was interested in her lover and his happiness. "Ranch," she said thoughtfully; "that's not a bad idea."

Her mother wrote the same patient loving letters, perfunctorily hopeful. Her father