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 embarrassed by the continual reminder of the Thing which held in check his normal interest in football.

Rhoda was steady and clear-eyed; she had had ten days in which to adjust herself to the new order, and while it was a heavy weight to support, her shoulders were braced to it,—not a gesture or word or action but bore witness to her strength of will and her talent for meeting facts on their own ground. Grover had never seen Rhoda thus reduced to her essentials; always in his past relations with her there had been a margin for banter or a tendency to dart away into some side-path if the road they were treading became dangerous or dull.

"Do you realize," he said to her, when they had changed trains and were coming within sight of the village in which they had been born, "that we are now both grown up, irretrievably?"

"That," agreed Rhoda, "is almost the worst part of all. To know that you've only yourself to look to—for everything. . . It's so much harder for a girl. And a spoiled girl," she added.

"Good Lord, Rhoda!" he protested, "If you call yourself spoiled!"

"Horrid people live in your old house," she informed him, as they drove past his gateway and he looked with a fearful eagerness through the screen of trees. "They have seven children—saucy little brats. Heaven knows where they all sleep."