“I shall not wait to find them out,” said Mr. Wedmore, decisively.  “He and Max are coming down together this evening.  My wife would have them to help in organizing some affair they’re getting up for Christmas.  I’ll send him to the right-about without any more nonsense.”

“But surely that is hardly—­”

“Hardly what?” snapped out Mr. Wedmore, as he poked the fire viciously.

“Well, hardly fair to either of the young people.  Put a few questions to him yourself, or better still, let your wife do it.  It may be only a storm in a teacup, after all.  Remember, he is the son of your old friend.  And you wouldn’t like to have it on your conscience that you had treated him harshly.”

The doctor’s advice was sane and sound enough, but Mr. Wedmore was not in the mood to listen to it.  That notion of an entanglement with another woman rankled in his proud mind, and made him still less inclined to be patient and forbearing.

“I shall give Doreen warning of what I am going to do at once,” said he, “before Horne turns up.”

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.  He was obstinate himself.

Mr. Wedmore crossed the long room to the door, and opened it sharply.

The hall was full of people and of great bales of goods, which were piled upon the center-table and heaped up all around it.

“Doreen!” he called, sharply.

Out of the crowd there rushed a girl—­such a girl!  One of those radiant creatures who explain the cult of womanhood; who make it difficult even for sober-minded, middle-aged men and matrons to realize that this is nothing but flesh and blood like themselves; one of those beautiful creatures who claim worship as a right and who repay it with kindness and brightness and sweetness and laughter.

No house was ever dull that held Doreen Wedmore.

She was a tall girl, brown-haired, brown-eyed, made to laugh and to live in the sunshine.  Nobody could resist her, and nobody ever tried to.

She sprang across the hall to her father and whirled him back into the dining-room, and put her back against it.

“Dudley’s come!” said she.  “He’s in the hall—­among the blankets!”

“Blankets!”

“Yes.”  She was crossing the room by this time to the doctor, whom she had quickly perceived, and was holding out her hand to him.  “You must know, doctor, that we are up to our eyes in blankets just now, and in bundles of red flannel, and in soup and coals.  Papa has been reading up Christmas in the country in the olden time, and he finds that to be correct you must deluge the neighborhood with those articles.  They are not at all what the people want, as far as I can make out.  But that doesn’t matter.  It pleases papa to demoralize the neighborhood; so we’re doing it.  And mamma helps him.  She dates from the prehistoric period when a wife really swore to obey her husband; so she does it through thick and thin.  Of course, she knows better all the time.  She could always set papa right if she chose.  Whatever happens, papa must be obeyed.  So when he wants to run his dear old head into a noose, she dutifully holds it open for him, when all the time she knows how uncomfortable he’ll be till he gets out.”