don't know what I mean, but I've got to. I've stood this horror as long as I can. It's been terrible!"
"Gloria, do you think Stan would like you to do a strange thing like this? Wouldn't he expect you to stay here for a few days at least and help comfort his mother and keep up appearances?"
Gloria's eyes narrowed. "Mother, Stan isn't to be considered anymore! That's over!"
"Why, Gloria, what a terrible thing to say. When you just adored Stan and wanted to do everything you could to please him! Why look how hard you worked on your father to get him to build a bar in your new house just because Stan wanted one."
Gloria's face hardened. "Yes, and now I wish I hadn't," she said half fiercely. "If Stan hadn't been so fond of drinking, he might not be dead to-day!"
"Glory! What a shocking thing to say! Stan never drank to excess. I always felt he was very abstemious. And surely you want to comport yourself as he would want you to do!"
"No," said Gloria, "I don't! I don't think he has any right over my actions now. I think he forfeited his right by going up to New York and taking that dancing girl out to dinner the very week before we were to be married! He has made me feel that nothing he ever said to me was really mine anymore."
"Why, you silly child! What a perfectly extravagant idea! You poor child, you take after your father! He's always getting such ridiculous notions in his head! But Gloria dear, you mustn't make so much of that incident. Even if it were all true what the papers said, which of course it isn't, why, that isn't a great thing. Most men have been a little wild before they settle down to get married and had little affairs with girls that they wouldn't have married, for a fortune."
"Mother! You don't mean that! You know Father never was a man like that!"
"Well, no," said the mother with a half-contemptuous smile. "Your father of course is an exception. He always had a puritanical conscience, and his bringing up was purely Victorian of course."
Gloria lifted her chin a bit haughtily. "Well, if you don't mind, Mother, I think I'll be Victorian after this like Dad! You know it makes a difference when it really happens to you, Mother! You've always had a wonderful husband and lived a sheltered life, Mother, and you don't understand, I–Mother, I know! It's happened to me, and it makes all the difference in the world!"
Then Gloria heard her father's voice calling from the hall to know if she was ready, and she jumped up and flung her arms around her bewildered, indignant mother's neck.
"Dear Mother!" she said, kissing her fervently. "I'm dreadfully sorry to hurt you, but I really have to go now and find out how to stand things. You don't understand, but I love you!"
"But what shall I tell Stan's mother?" asked the still-indignant mother.
"Tell her I was about to get sick and Dad had to take me away for a few days. Good-bye, Mother!" And with a little wave of her hand and a faint attempt at a smile, she, without waiting for a servant, seized her two bags and was gone down the stairs and out the door.
Down near the gateway, Vanna stepped out of the shrubbery, her face swollen with crying. She stopped them long enough to kiss her sister.
"I understand, Glory darling!" she whispered.
Then they were gone, down the highway, out into a world that the father used to know and hadn't seen for a long, long time.
CHAPTER III
Mrs. Sutherland had managed to quash the sandwich idea from the day's scheme of things, so about one o'clock the travelers began to get very hungry, for breakfast had been but a sketchy affair for both of them.
They lunched at a quiet little roadside place the like of which Gloria had never entered before, so plain and quiet that it wasn't even a tearoom. It was just a little cottage by the roadside with a sign out by the white gate: Homemade bread sandwiches, fried egg or chicken.
It was a revelation to Gloria to enter that tiny cottage. It seemed scarcely big enough to be a bird cage, yet she discovered that it housed five people, a man and his wife, a little girl of eight years, another of three with gold curls almost the color of Gloria's, and a boy of ten who came whistling in from the barn with a basket of eggs.
The cold chicken was delicious, great flaky slices, and the bread was a dream. Mr. Sutherland said it tasted just like his mother's, the fried eggs were cooked just right, and the butter was something to be remembered. The little eight-year-old girl proudly said that she had helped to churn it. There was a pitcher of creamy milk. It didn't somehow taste like city milk, though the Sutherland milk always came from a herd of specially selected cows.
Gloria was hungry for the first time since the tragedy. Mr. Sutherland talked with the mother. She told him that they had lived there five years, ever since her husband had failed in business. He had taken what little he had left, come up here into the woods, and cleared this land that an uncle had left him. They were getting on all right till her husband broke his leg. So now she had to do something to help out with the doctor's bills. But they were going to get on all right. The leg was knitting nicely and the doctor was willing to wait, and the children were selling vegetables in the next little town. It was only two miles away, and the boy had a small express wagon. Sometimes his sister went with him. They were doing very well and were thankful that things were no worse.
Gloria gave a startled look around on the cheap furnishings of the little front parlor that had been turned into a wayside inn. She caught a glimpse of the kitchen beyond and a bedroom opening out of it where a man lay on the bed with a weight attached to his foot to keep the leg in position. Could anybody live in such crowded quarters and really be happy? Thankful that it was no worse? She thought of her own lovely home, which she had known most of her life.
"It isn't as if we had to live in the city," said the mother happily. "This is a nice, healthy place for the children, and we can raise most everything we really need to eat, and of course we don't require fine clothing." Her voice had a lilt in it, and there was a dimness in Mr. Sutherland's eyes as he paid the modest bill.
"You don't charge enough for such wonderful food!" he said and threw down another bill on the table as he picked up his hat and hurried out.
"Oh, but–" said the mother, examining the money. "This is too much! My price covers the cost and gives us enough. We really couldn't take this!" She followed them out to the car.
"It's all right!" said Gloria's father, putting his foot on the starter. "Tell your husband that's just from one brother to another. I used to be a farmer's boy myself once, and I know times can get pretty hard. I'd like to think of you here getting on. Sometime maybe I'll come back again!" He threw in his clutch and was off, leaving the bewildered little mother standing at the gate clutching the bill and staring after them as if they were a couple of fairies riding in a coach.
"Oh, Dad, I'm glad you did that!" said Gloria, leaning her cheek lovingly against his shoulder. "They're sweet, aren't they? And they're happy, too, in spite of everything!"
"There are lots worse fates than living in a little cottage in the woods," said the father musingly. "When I was a little tad, we had a house as near like that as two peas, and Father and Mother were happy as two clams."
"Oh, Dad, you never told us about that!"
"Well,"
