He’s the most ‘trying’ Graeme I’ve ever come across! The last time I was here his mother was away, and he was acting like a young hyena. I really had to speak to him. Yes, I did! He was prancing across the room and mimicking everything I did, and when I told him to stop, he ran out in the hall and I heard him singing at the top of his lungs, ‘Oh, Lutie, Lutie, ain’t she cutie!’ and he got his two little sisters laughing so they couldn’t answer me. I certainly should have turned him over my knee and spanked him if his nurse hadn’t come along just then. Well, are you all here? The lawyer hasn’t come and gone already, has he? I didn’t want to miss the reading of the will, of course, though I really had my hands quite full without coming here. What have you done?”

“Oh, nothing at all,” said Agatha Lane coldly, “that is, nothing that need worry you. We’ve just been talking—disagreeing as usual.” She lifted her chin disdainfully.

“Well,” said Lutie vivaciously, “I think the first question to settle is whether John Graeme had lost his money. If he hadn’t, if there’s plenty of money, of course the whole matter is quite simple. Simply ship the whole lot of them off to good schools where they will be brought up to be a credit to the family, finished and all that. Even little Robin isn’t too young. There are kindergarten boarding schools, I understand, where they are looked after and brought up just as well, or even better than they could be brought up in the usual home. Personally I think all these Graeme children are badly spoiled and need to be taken in hand at once. As for Jennifer, she can be sent abroad for a couple of years on a trip with a good chaperone, who will see that she doesn’t get too involved with the wrong young man. There! I think I’ve arranged the whole affair nicely, don’t you?”

Jennifer, in her dark refuge behind the library curtain, suddenly sat up very straight and very angry, her eyes blazing, her tear-wet lashes starring them, her face white and drawn with a sort of righteous fury. Almost, for an instant, she was on the point of darting out among them and smiting them with bitter words. Then caution came upon her suddenly like a calm hand on her forehead and warned her to hold her peace and not manifest opposition too soon. Let them make their plans. She would see that they were not carried out! She would do something, anything to prevent them. Trips to Europe for herself might be all very well sometime, but not at their will, not by force, sugar-coated as if they were doing her a favor. Not with her little brothers and sisters parked here and there, anywhere, as if they were all a part of the furnishing of the house.

Then an interruption occurred in the entrance of the lawyer and his assistant, and there was a general hush and a stir while the chairs were rearranged and the lawyer took a seat by a little table, which Jim Delaney cleared of bric-a-brac for his use.

While the lawyers were bringing forth sheaves of papers from their briefcases and talking in low monosyllables to each other, the whole company subsided for an instant or two, and then the ladies began to converse again, in low cultured whispers, Majesta loftily telling Lutie what had been said and suggested so far and adding some of her own comments, her tones gradually waxing clearer, so that her words were quite distinct on the other side of the library curtain. Jennifer caught her breath softly and clenched her small hands tensely. She wished with all her heart that her beloved father could come back for just one minute at least, from the far place to which the fallen airplane had sent him, and tell those horrible relatives where to get off. “Where to get off.” That was just the way she knew he would have phrased it if he had been here and heard their preposterous plans. Separating his children! Sending them off to suit their will, as if they belonged to all of them! Could Dad ever have dreamed that he would leave them in danger of such things?

But, of course, he wouldn’t have expected, when he thought of it at all, that he and Mother would both be taken away, not at once. Of course, he would have expected Mother to do the planning.

The tears streamed forth again and pelted down the frightened young face, stern in its anger. And now she, she was the only one left to take her mother’s place. Well, of course, there was Jerry, but he was only a year out of prep school and they wouldn’t feel that he had authority. They knew nothing about him. Thought him still in prep school! But she would be of age in a little over three months, and she must somehow protect the rest, just as Father or Mother would have done if either one of them had been left behind from the horrible disaster that had taken them both in one swift stroke. She, she must do it alone! She would have to get them all away out of harm’s reach!

Then a sentence from the whispered conversation beyond the curtain reached her.