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 "If you want Lizzie Janes and her mother in this family," Millie said, "I don't. I guess it won't be hard to let Wat and them know it, either. And if you won't," she ended, defiantly, as she turned away, "I will!"

She went out and Ollie followed. Mrs. Tyler dropped back in her chair, gazing speechlessly at her husband. He caught her eye as he turned a page of his paper. "All right, now," he said. "Wait till Wat comes."

They waited. Millie did not. She distrusted her mother's partiality for Wat, and she distrusted her father's distaste for interfering in any household troubles. She trusted herself only, assured that if Wat's ridiculous misalliance was to be prevented it must be prevented by her; and she felt that it could be easily prevented, because it was ridiculous, because Wat was ridiculous, because Lizzie Janes was absurd. W T hat was Wat's secrecy in the affair but a confession that he was ashamed of it? What was Lizzie Janes's sly silence but an evidence that she had hoped to hook Wat before his family knew what was going on?

What indeed? She asked it of Ollie, and Ollie asked it of her. They had locked themselves in Millie's bedroom to consult together—Ollie sitting, tailor-wise, cross-legged on the bed, and Millie gesticulating up and down the room—in one of those angry councils of war against their elders in which they were accustomed to face the cynical