trilling die away into the house in the direction of the dining room.

A Colonel Harrison Stoddard — colonel from younger service in the National Guard, himself a retired merchant prince whose hobby was industrial relations and social unrest — held the table most of the meal upon the extension of the Employers’ Liability Act so as to include agricultural laborers. But Paula found a space in which casually to give the news to Dick that she was running away for the afternoon on a jaunt up to Wickenberg to the Masons.

“Of course I don’t know when I’ll be back — you know what the Masons are. And I don’t dare ask you to come, though I’d like you along.”

Dick shook his head.