“Cannzy ones?” he laughed.  “That’s what one of our customers calls them.”

And while he knelt before her with an array of shoe boxes around him, fitting a dainty slipper on Tony’s pretty foot, Tony herself looked not at the slipper but at Philip, studying his face shrewdly.  He looked older, graver.  There was less laughter in his blue eyes, a grimmer line about his young mouth.  Poor Phil!  Evidently Carlotta wasn’t the only one who was paying the price of too much loving.  Tony made up her mind to rush in, though she knew it might be a case for angel hesitation.

“I’ve never given you a message Hal Underwood sent you,” she observed irrelevantly.

Philip looked up surprised.

“Hal Underwood!  What message did he send me?  I hardly know him.”

“He seemed to know you rather well.  He told me to tell you to come down and marry Carlotta, that you were the only man that could keep her in order.  That is too big, Phil.  Try a smaller one.”  The speaker kicked off the offending slipper.  Philip mechanically picked it up and replaced it in the box.

“That is rather a queer message,” he commented.  “I had an idea Underwood wanted to marry Carlotta himself.  Try this.”  He reached for another pump.  His eyes were lowered so Tony could not see them.  She wished she could.

“He does,” she said.  “She won’t have him.”

“Is—­is there—­anybody she is likely to have?” The words jerked out as the young man groped for the shoe horn which was almost beside his hand but which apparently he did not see at all.

“I am afraid she is likely to take Herbert Lathrop unless somebody stops her by main force.  Why don’t you play Lochinvar yourself, Phil?  You could.”

Philip looked straight up at Tony then, the slipper forgotten in his hand.

“Tony, do you mean that?” he asked.

“I certainly do.  Make her marry you, Phil.  It is the only way with Carlotta.”

“I don’t want to make any girl marry me,” he said.

“Oh, hang your silly pride, Phil Lambert!  Carlotta wants to marry you I tell you though she would murder me if she knew I did tell you.”

“Maybe she does.  But she doesn’t want to live in Dunbury.  I’ve good reason to know that.  We thrashed it out rather thoroughly on the top of Mount Tom last June.  She hasn’t changed her mind.”

Tony sighed.  She was afraid Phil was right.  Carlotta hadn’t changed her mind.  Was it because she was afraid she might, that she was determining to marry Herbert?

“And you can’t leave Dunbury?” she asked soberly.

Just at that moment Stuart Lambert approached, a tall fine looking man, with the same blue eyes and fresh coloring as his son and brown hair only slightly graying around the temples.  He had an air of vigor and ageless youth.  Indeed a stranger might easily have taken the two men for brothers instead of father and son.