her hands with a gesture that mocked at her futility.

"Sheila can never be nicer!" he persisted loyally.

"Oh, yes, she can—if some one wiser than I teaches her!"

"I," said Peter importantly, "I teach her rhetoric at the Shadyville Seminary. '"I," quoth the sparrow, "with my little bow and arrow!"'"

Mrs. Caldwell leaned forward and touched his shoulder. "I'm very serious," she said. "Here's my little orphaned Sheila—my dead boy's child—with no near kin in the world but me. And I'm not fit for the task of helping her to grow up. Oh, Peter, will you help?"

"You know I will! At least, I'll try."

She smiled at him through her earnestness. "Your rhetoric isn't enough," she warned him. "All you know isn't enough. You'll have to keep on learning too, Peter, if you're really going to help her."

"I will," he promised again. "I'm twenty-eight, and a lazy beggar—but I can still learn."

Mrs. Caldwell drew a quick breath of relief: "Thank you, Peter. To tell you the truth, I've been really a little frightened lately."

"About Sheila? But she's so sweet!"

"And so strange! She isn't like a child. And it's not because she's outgrowing her childhood, for she's not like a young girl either. Peter"—and Mrs. Caldwell's voice sank to a whisper now, as if she communicated a dangerous thing—"Peter, she's like—a poet!"

Peter laughed outright at her timid pronouncement of the word. "But is that so terrible?" he teased. "All poets are not mad, after all."

"Oh, you may laugh. I dare say my terror of a thing like genius is funny. But it's genuine terror, Peter. What should I do with a poet on my hands? I tell you, I'm not wise enough to—to trim the wick of a star!"

"Well," he suggested comfortably, "she may not be a poet. What makes you think she's likely to be?"

"You know how she reads—quite beyond the ordinary little girl's appreciation?"

"Yes—but she may have an extraordinary mind without being a genius of any sort. And I'm responsible for her reading. It isn't so precocious after all. I've just given her simple, beautiful things instead of simple, silly ones."

"But, Peter, I've another reason besides her reading. She goes off by herself and sits brooding—dreaming—for hours at a time. I've come on her unexpectedly once or twice and she didn't even realize that I was there—she was so rapt. She looked as if she were seeing visions!"

"Perhaps she was," said Peter softly. "I've seen visions in my time, and I'm no poet. Haven't you—when you were as young as Sheila? Confess now—haven't you?"

But Mrs. Caldwell resolutely shook her head: "Not like Sheila does. And neither have you, Peter. Sheila is different from you and me. You know her mother was Irish—full of whimsical fancy and quaint superstitions."

"Ah, I had forgotten about her mother."

"Of course. You were only a boy when she died." And her eyes filled with slow, remembering tears as she went on, "She always believed in fairies—even when she was face to face with a reality like death. And Sheila believes in them, too, though her mother didn't live long enough to tell her about them. She never says anything about it, but I know that she has a whole world which I can't share—the dream-world her mother bequeathed to her."

"But that's beautiful!" cried Peter.

"Yes," she admitted, "it's beautiful. But, Peter, it's sad for me because—because I can't follow her there."

She fell silent for a moment, her eyes wistful and anxious; and suddenly he saw the pathos of age in her face as well as its finely tempered beauty, the pathos of all the closed doors that would open no more—among them the door of fairyland.

"It's true," she said bravely, as if they had looked at those closed doors together and she were answering his thought. "I'm an old woman and I've lost the way to fairyland. So I want you to go with Sheila in my place. I want you to guard her dream—and keep her safe, too. I'm afraid for her, Peter—I'm afraid!"

"Dear Mrs. Caldwell, how can I walk where your foot is too heavy?" And Peter's voice was very gentle.

"Ask your poets that. I was never one for the poets. I can sew a fine seam and make my garden grow—nothing more. But you have the store of poetry—and you have youth."

"There," said Peter, pointing to a lad of fourteen or thereabout who was coming toward them, "there is what Sheila calls youth."

"And there," retorted Mrs. Caldwell, "is what I call the heavy foot. But Theodore Kent is a good boy. He's just not good enough for Sheila. I can't understand the child's liking him!"

Theodore came up to them briskly, his cap off, his yellow-brown hair shining in the sunlight with a vigorous glory, his face ruddy and smiling. His body and his features were alike, strong and somewhat bluntly fashioned, the body and the features of the very sturdy, closely akin to the earth's health and kindliness.

"Where's Sheila, Mrs. Caldwell?" he asked, happily unconscious of a critical atmosphere.

"In the back garden. What do you want, Ted?"

He lifted a battered volume. "She promised to help me with this rhetoric stuff," he announced, quite unabashed at the admission of Sheila's superior cleverness.

"Well, run along and find her." And Mrs. Caldwell glanced at Peter as if to add, "Didn't I tell you he wasn't good enough for Sheila?"

"But what, after all, does an understanding of rhetoric amount to? What has it done for me?" murmured Peter, answering the glance. And then, as the boy still lingered before them, "I'll go with you, Ted. I must make my bow to Sheila before I leave."

The back garden belied its humble name. The kitchen windows opened upon it, it is true, but they did not discourage its prideful aspect. Indeed, it might just as well have been a front garden, for it had never been the shelter of the useful cabbage and its homely relations. The young grass was close-cropped with the same care that had been bestowed upon the front lawn, and simple, gay flowers flourished in bright beds and along the smooth walk. Toward the end of the garden, and as if for a charming climax, several cherry trees shook blossoming branches to the spring wind.

And beneath those trees lay Sheila, her eyes lifted to their bloom, a still, enraptured little figure, quite unconscious that intruders were drawing near.

At sight of her, Peter halted and laid a staying hand on Ted's arm. "Don't speak to her!" he whispered.

And so the two stood and looked at her, and yet she did not stir nor grow aware of their presence.

She was a slender little shape, lying there on the fresh grass—a thin child, with a pale face and black hair braided away from it; a child who was not actually pretty, nor, to the eyes of the casual observer, in any other way remarkable. But to Peter she seemed touched, for the moment, with the glamour of enchantment, this small dreamer communing with her fays.

"Don't speak to her!" he said again, as Ted moved restively. "She's as far away as if she were in a different world," he added softly, and only to himself.

But Ted, overhearing, nodded comprehendingly. "Sheila does make you feel like that sometimes, even if she is standing right by you all the time. She's queer—Sheila is. But," and he spoke boastfully, though still in the cautious undertone Peter had used, "but I always call her back!"

Peter looked down at him, at the frank, wholesome, unimaginative face, fatuous now with the vanity of power.

"I always call her back!" the boy repeated proudly.

"Yes," said Peter slowly, "you—and people like you—will always call her back. But not this time, Ted—not this time. I'll help you with your rhetoric myself. Sheila has better things to think of just now." And putting his hands on the boy's shoulders, he turned him about for retreat.

It occurred to Peter then that he was fulfilling Mrs. Caldwell's trust, but he shook his head