thought that she had never seen such beautiful brown eyes. Her mouth was small and she opened it little when she spoke, but when she laughed, which was seldom, she opened it wide, showing her white teeth.
"Isn't life a funny tangle?" she said. "It would take a lot of untangling to straighten us, wouldn't it, Alayne?"
"Does it bear talking about? Hadn't we better just talk of you and me?"
"I suppose so. But perhaps God is trying to untangle it all, or perhaps it is just that we are becoming more mellow with age. Do you think, perhaps, that we are becoming more mellow with age, Alayne?"
Alayne had forgotten how quaint, how pathetically sagacious she was.
"Perhaps we are becoming more mellow," she agreed, soberly. "Let us hope so. . . . I cannot see us as free agents—just marionettes in a strange dance." Her mouth tightened in a bitter line.
The sunshine flickered over Pheasant. She was visualizing that macabre dance. "I can picture it," she said. "Renny leads. Then the uncles, the aunt. All of us dancing after—holding hands—bowing—looking over our shoulders. Wake last, with little horns, and a pipe, playing the tune." Her eyes glowed into Alayne's. "I've such an imagination, Alayne. I can make pictures by the hour. It's a great help to have an imagination. Piers has very little, and he says he wishes I hadn't so much. He thinks I'd be a better wife and mother if I hadn't so much. What do you think?"
"I think," said Alayne, "that you're an adorable child. They tell me that you're a mother, but I can't believe it."
"Wait till you see Mooey! He's simply wonderful. Not so fat as Meg's baby, but such a look in his eyes! It quite frightens me. . . . Still, I don't believe there's any truth in the saying that the good die young. I shouldn't look on old Mrs. Whiteoak—Gran—as specially good, should you? Not that I should insinuate that she's ever been immoral—Heaven forbid that I
