"Do you blame me for telling just how heartless I thought they were?"
"You were perfectly right, old girl."
"Eden, I hope you won't mind what I'm going to say, but I do wish Alayne would not interfere between me and the children. She has such ideas."
"Oh, she has the habit of wanting to set everything right. She's the same with me. Always telling me how unmethodical I am, and how untidy with my things. She means well enough. It's just her little professorial ways."
"Poor lamb!" said Meggie, stroking the shining casque of his hair.
Wake's voice came, broken by sobs: "Meggie!"
Meg disengaged herself from Eden's arms. "There, now, I must go to him, and tell him he's forgiven."
The party downstairs had retreated after Meggie's attack, leaving a trail of wrangling behind them. Piers reached for his cap, and, stooping at the door of his grandmother's room, said, loud enough for Alayne to hear: "They're spoiling the two kids among them, anyway. As for Eden, he's no better than another woman!"
"He's like his poor flibbertigibbet mother," said Gran.
The cloud under which Wakefield awoke next morning was no more than a light mist, soon dispelled by the sun of returning favor. Before the day was over he was his own dignified, airy, and graceless self again, a little subdued perhaps, a little more anxious to please, a shade more subtle in the game of his life.
The game of life went on at Jalna. A stubborn heavy game, requiring not so much agility of mind as staying power and a thick skin. The old red house, behind the shelter of spruce and balsam, drew into itself as the win-
