work, so that in a few minutes they were both absorbed and chatting quite cheerfully, never dreaming of the conversation that was going on in the north porch. Only the white-curtained windows of the best room could hear it, and they were shut tight.

“Now, Mr. Lane, since the youngster’s gone in, I guess we might as well get right down to business. I’ve shown you my papers and proofs, and there’s no special use rubbing it into her that her father was a dead failure clear from the start, and that the sticks of furniture he left and the few dollars banked or coming from his work ’ll only square up his accounts and leave the kid on the world, so to speak. I own I’m clean flabbergasted myself, for I thought he was a man of some property through his wife, for when he wrote, his letters were chuck full of high ideas for the girl here.”

Joshua Lane fidgeted miserably on the edge of his chair, and if ever a man longed for the presence and ready tongue of his wife, it was he.

“I suppose that’s one way o’ lookin’ at it,” he assented after a while, “but mebbe in some way he didn’t flat out so much as it looks. He never gave an ill word to any one, and Bird here’s as smart and talkable and writes a fist as good as the seminary principal over to Northboro, all through his teachin’, so no wonder she set a store by him. As to leavin’ the child on the world, she’ll never feel the hurtin’ edge of it while mother and Joshua Lane’s got roof and bite. I told O’More so, and I reckon it eased him considerable.”

“Smart, is she?” echoed the other; “that’s a mercy. Girls have to get a move on them nowadays in the city, and if they can’t start in at type-writing or something when they’re sixteen or so, they get shoved out of the race as leftovers by a new lot before they’ve earned their ten a week. I’ve got a good job now, but I’ve had to hustle for it and keep a lively step, too. That’s why it goes hard to lose two days’ time on this business. I was mighty afraid when I saw what a forsaken hole this was that the girl might be green as the grass, and n. g. altogether. No, I didn’t mean any offence,” he said, as he noticed Joshua’s face flush at his reference to the pretty hillside village, “but I’ve never had a use for the country. Give me streets with a push of people and a lively noise and trolleys going by at night to remind you yer alive, if you don’t sleep straight through.

“Of course, knowing nothing of the circumstances before I left, I couldn’t quite fix a plan,—might have had to wait around and see to that mill property if it hadn’t vamoosed, but as it is, I don’t see why Bird shouldn’t go right back with me to-morrow morning. I’ve got three lively boys besides a poor little crippled feller,—them and the city sights ’ll cheer her up. It’s different from what I thought to find, and I don’t owe Terry any favours of purse or tongue, but I’ve no girls, and blood’s thicker ’n water even though the English streak is heatin’ to an all-through Irishman,—but let that go. I’ll give her some schooling until she’s fit age to choose her trade, or if she’s tasty looking, get in some good shop, and she can ease her way along meantime in minding little Billy or helping the woman out. For I’d have you know that though I’ve a good job, and there’s always meat in the pot, we’re plain people of no pretence. I’ve money in a land company, though, that’ll soon give us our own home and not so far out either but what a gun would shoot into the Bowery.”

John O’More’s speech poured out so rapidly that it almost stunned Joshua Lane. When he pulled himself together, he gasped: “Did you say that you calkerlate to take Bird away from us and to-morrow at that? I’ll have to go down to Aunt Jimmy’s, I reckon, and call mother to onct,” but as he started from his chair “mother” appeared, coming up the road in the buggy clucking vigorously to the old gray horse, excitement written in every line of her homely, lovable face.

As she pulled up the horse at the gate, an entirely unnecessary labour as for the past ten years he had never willingly gone past it, Joshua, wearing a white, scared look upon his usually placid face, greeted her with: “Sakes alive, Lauretta Ann, I’m wonderful put out; it never rains but it pours; an’ ’s if there wasn’t enough trouble for one day, Bird’s uncle, John O’More, has turned up. He’s a rough, drivin’, quick-tongued sort o’ chap, like the travellin’ man that sold us the horse-rake that had fits of balking and tearin’ up the medder, and when I complained, he said, says he, ‘Why, certainly, I forgot it had the plough combination,—I had oughter asked you an extry five on it.’”

“Nonsense, Joshua Lane, nobody’s going to carry Bird off under our very noses, uncle or no uncle; I’ll soon settle that! But talking of pourin’ rain,—it’s certainly let drive on us this day, for your Aunt Jimmy’s had a stroke; and though she can’t move she can speak her mind still, and isn’t for lettin’ folks in or havin’ things done for her as she ought. I’ve left Dinah Lucky with her, and I’ve stopped at Doctor Jedd’s and told him to hurry down, but the time has come when you’ve just got to assert yourself willy-nilly. It’s you, not me, as is her eldest nephew and kin, and while I’m more’n willing to do the work, you’ve got to show some spunk. Now jist you git into a biled shirt and your good coat and go down and stand off the neighbours that, now she can’t stir, ’ll all be wrigglin’ and slippin’ through that door like eels in the mill sluice when the gate’s up. I’ll soon settle that O’More.”

Joshua, much relieved, obediently went into the house, while Mrs. Lane, after looking into the kitchen to be sure that supper was progressing, smoothed her Sunday dress that she had donned that morning for the funeral, opened the windows of the best room to impress her visitor with its green carpet and cabinet organ, and asked John O’More to come in.

“Thanks, Mrs. Lane I take it, but I guess I’ll stay out here,—had enough of shut-up places in that train to-day, besides some ladies object to smoke in the house.”

Before she could speak a word or even notice the long cigar that was sticking out of his mouth in the direction of his left eye, he had plunged into the subject at the exact point where it had been dropped. “Now as to Bird, Mrs. Lane; your husband and I have tongue-threshed things out, and he can repeat the same to you. I know just how things stand, so nuff said about what’s past. I travel in the west and Canada for a steady house, and I’m away a good deal; now Bird can be company for my wife as my kids are all boys. I’ll give her schoolin’, a trade, and a shove along on the road in a couple of years. I wouldn’t do less for any kin of my own, and I kind o’ take to her.”

“But we don’t want you to take her, and I reckon she don’t either, for—” put in Mrs. Lane, almost bursting with suppressed speech.

“Excuse me, one moment more, madam,” he continued, removing his cigar and speaking rather more slowly, “I judge that you object to her going to-morrow; now I can’t stop around here, and it’s an expensive trip. Seein’ the city ’ll be a change, and she’ll soon settle down all right.”

“But we don’t want her to go at all,” Mrs. Lane almost shrieked; “we want her to live with us!”

“As what, for instance?” queried O’More, growing more Irish in his speech, “a kind of a charity help, or had you intentions of adopting her by the law? If so, and she wishes,