“I’m glad.  I do hope nothing will interrupt you.”

“Something will; it always does.  Fortunately it is Lent and not much is stirring.  Anyway, I mean to have my mornings free, whatever comes.”

“I’ll mount guard on the threshold, if you want,” he responded.

Only a week afterward, Theodora was in her writing-room, hard at work.  Her desk, surmounted by a shabby photograph of her husband in his boyhood, was orderly and deserted; but the broad couch across the western window was strewn with sheets of manuscript which overflowed to the floor, while in the midst of them Theodora sat enthroned, a book on her knee and her ink insecurely poised on one of the cushions beside her.  Across the lawn she could see The Savins among the tall, bare trees, and she paused now and then to watch the yellow sunshine as it sifted down through the branches.  All at once she stopped, with a frown.

“But I must see her,” Allyn was saying sharply.

“She is busy.”

“Never mind; she will see me.”

There was a word or two more; then a silence, and Theodora returned to her interrupted sentence.  The next minute, she started abruptly, as she heard a boyish fist descend on the panels of her door.

“Go away!  Oh, my ink!” she exclaimed.  “Please let me alone.  It’s all tipped over.”

“I’m sorry, Ted; but I must come.”  And Allyn stalked into the room.

“Oh, what do you want?” she asked despairingly, as she took up the dripping pillow by the corners and looked about for a suitable place to deposit it.

“Throw it out of the window,” he suggested briefly.  “I didn’t mean to, Teddy; but there’s a row, and I must tell you.”

She shut down the window sharply.  Then she turned to look at him, and of a sudden the annoyance vanished from her face and in its place there came a new expression gentler and of a great protecting love.  Years before, in his invalid boyhood, her husband had known that look.  Of late, no one but Allyn had called it forth.  To-day there was need for it, for Allyn was in evident want of sympathy.  His cheeks were flushed; but there was a white line around his lips, and his hands, like his voice, were unsteady.  He was short and slight, with a mass of smooth brown hair and brown eyes that for the moment had lost all their merriment and were sternly sombre under their straight brows.  His chin was firm; but his lips were not so full of decision.

Swiftly Mrs. Farrington gathered up her papers and shut them into her Desk.  Then she turned abruptly, laid her hands on the boy’s shoulders and looked straight down into his eyes.

“What is it, Allyn?” she asked gravely.

For an instant his lips quivered.  Then he said briefly,—­

“I’m expelled, Teddy.”

“Allyn!”

“Yes, I know.”

“Not really?”

She read confirmation in his eyes.

“What for?” she demanded.