WHEN MRS. DALLAS and Laurel sat down at their table in the big hotel dining-room an hour later, Laurel was all ready for her long journey to New York, and Mrs. Dallas all ready for her shorter one to Boston, where at the appointed meeting-place in the South Station she was to pass Laurel over as usual to the spectacled Miss Simpson.

The hotel guests seated near Laurel and her mother observed their traveling clothes. One of them later, in the hotel lobby, approached Laurel as she sat, half-hidden in a high-backed armchair, waiting for her mother. Her neat black-enameled suitcase stood beside her, and her silver-handled umbrella lay across her knees.

“Are you and your mammar leaving us today?” asked the lady.

“I am,” Laurel replied.

“But not your mammar?”

Laurel wished she wouldn’t say “mammar.”

“No. Mother isn’t.”

“Oh, so that’s it! You’re going alone! And where are you going?”

“To New York.”

“To New York! How nice! To visit, I suppose?”

Laurel nodded.

“Let’s see. I believe I’ve heard your pappar lives in New York,” remarked the lady. Any reference to her father always put Laurel on the defensive. “Doesn’t your pappar live there?” the lady persisted.

“I call him Father,” said Laurel, flushing.

“You funny child! Well, doesn’t your father live in New York?”

“My father has business in New York which takes him there frequently,” Laurel replied as she had heard her mother reply dozens of times before.

“Oh, I see! And you’re going to New York to visit your father. Is that it?” purred the lady.

There were sharp claws behind that purr, Laurel knew. Also, she knew that it was not customary for little girls to visit their fathers alone. So now she replied, “No, I’m going to visit a hotel.”

“But you’ll see your father, of course?”

It appeared quite legitimate, Laurel had long ago discovered, for grown-up people to ask questions of a child which they’d never think of asking each other. Therefore, she decided, it was legitimate for children to remain silent when they chose. Of course she wasn’t a little child who might refuse to speak and not mean to be rude, but if people would keep on asking questions as if she were only six, she would keep on being silent. She was silent now. She closed her lips firmly, and from beneath her long bang stared blankly across the lobby. The lady repeated her question.

“You’ll see your father, won’t you?”