Joan told her plans. “You’ll be able to get along without me for a little while?” she asked doubtfully. “You young imp of Satan!” demanded Mrs. Munday—her feelings of outraged virtue exaggerating perhaps her real sentiments. “What are you doing?”!

He moved so that he was between her and the other room, his back to the open doors. “You think I ought to?” he said. “No,” laughed Joan. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“And this is Hilda,” concluded Mrs. Phillips. “She ought to be in bed if she hadn’t a naughty Daddy who spoils her.” Hilda! Why had she never thought of it? The whole thing was so obvious. “You ought not to think about yourself. You ought to think only of him and of his work. Nothing else matters.” If she could say that to Joan, what might she not have said to her mother who, so clearly, she divined to be the incubus—the drag upon her father’s career? She could hear the child’s dry, passionate tones—could see Mrs. Phillips’s flabby cheeks grow white—the frightened, staring eyes. Where her father was concerned the child had neither conscience nor compassion. She had waited her time. It was a few days after Hilda’s return to school that Mrs. Phillips had been first taken ill. “Thank you,” she answered. “He would think it kind of you, I know.”