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 way get to feel." And a little later, after they had gone about the house, in response to Clara's request, Marjorie asked, "Well, what are you thinking now?"

"How puzzling it must be," Clara replied promptly but with deliberation, speaking her gs, as she did when she thought about them and enunciated carefully.

"To whom?"

"Well," said Clara, "to the man, especially; when he's handing out all this, I don't see how your father's ever know where he was."

"Oh," Marjorie comprehended, "you mean where he was with my mother."

"I mean any man who hands his wife a layout like this," Clara generalized, refusing the too personal. "I don't see how he'd ever know whether she was sticking to him for himself or for this. And it wouldn't make it any too simple for her to know herself. Well, what are we here for, Marjorie? You ain't one to ask me up to show off, though I do appreciate a touch of high life. What's on your chest?"

Marjorie took Clara again to her own room. "You know so many pieces of what's happened to the Hales, I want to tell you the whole thing; and after coming back here myself from Clearedge Street, it didn't seem to me fair to try to tell you without bringing you here first."

"Not fair to me?" asked Clara.

"No; not fair to mother and father." And there, in Marjorie's room, much as they talked together at Jen Cordeen's, Marjorie related all to Clara.

At the end, Clara pronounced no judgment; indeed, she offered no comment at all; she merely asked, "Well, now what are you goin' to do, kid?"

It was spontaneous, utterly unconscious and wholly