desirable neighborhood in every way."

So the lease was signed, and Ellen Neal and the furniture sent for, and the first month's rent paid in advance; and these feats having been accomplished, Mary Darcy took to her familiar bed and died there, promptly and unobtrusively as was her way, without leaving any inconsiderate doctors' and nurses' bills behind her.

That first summer in Kentucky was a strange time to Joan. It was filled with dim memories of the books she read aloud to her father day after day, in the futile effort to be a companion to him; of long walks she took with him in the cool of the evenings, through streets and parks and suburbs that were as strange to the man who had come back to them, Joan suspected, as to herself; and far more desolate. For the ghost of a boy haunted them; a mischievous, headstrong, innocent lad who had meant no harm to the world, nor to himself, in those days.

Sometimes in the older streets he pointed out to her houses which came near to fulfilling her best hopes of pillared Southern mansions.

"Tim Throckmorton used to live there," he would say, forlornly; or "Many's the time I've courted pretty Sally Field in that parlor!"

Now there were "Furnished Room" signs in the windows, or shops in the lower floors, or, worst degeneracy of all, signs of negro habitation. For many a day the two hunted for a certain dearly remembered pond where a boy named Dick and his friends had been wont to repair for fishing and swimming and many a feat of derring-do. But they never found it; only houses already old, and even office-buildings, in the place where it might have been.

And in those long and lonely walks they met no friends. It was as if for Richard Darcy the streets of Louisville were peopled by the dead.

Joan had suffered for her father even more than for herself. Somehow she felt that she was better able to bear things than her father. And in her inner consciousness, lonely as she was for her mother, and must always be, she knew that the misery in her heart was a thing that would pass. She was too young to be so sad for long.

Old Ellen wisely kept her busy with her preparations for boarding-school, her father having announced his intention of complying scrupulously with his dead wife's wishes, no matter at what cost to himself. Joan thought this very generous of him, although the cost was figurative rather than literal, as Mrs. Darcy's little property was willed to her child, with himself as guardian. Sometimes she had been a little ashamed of herself for the willingness with which she prepared to leave him, the eagerness with which she longed for the merry companionships and irresponsibilities of school again. But perhaps it was natural enough, considering that throughout that dreary summer her sole companions had been her grief-stricken father, the servant Ellen, and the sympathetic maiden cousins, who would have felt it indelicate to so much as smile in the presence of such deep mourning.

Toward the end of the summer she made one other acquaintance, thanks to the above-mentioned lingerie. One of the sudden summer wind-storms which occur sometimes in the Ohio Valley landed in their yard one Monday morning a garment that had strayed unmistakably from the clothes line across the alley; a trifle of palest silk and lace and blue ribbons which Ellen Neal eyed with dark suspicion, but which Joan privately determined to copy for herself so soon as finances permitted.

Monday being the day when Ellen's temper was at its most difficult, Joan decided to abate her dignity to the point of returning the article herself; and so she made her way, looking very young and touching in her homemade black frock, to the front entrance of the house across the alley. And there by good luck she met, just alighting in her porte-cochère from a most imposing limousine, a person who was indubitably the owner of the strayed garment; a plump, blonde, dimpled lady who suggested pink crêpe de Chine and blue satin bows all over her. She greeted Joan with an effulgence that seemed out of all proportion to its cause, until in the course of conversation it transpired that she, like the Darcys, was a newcomer in Louisville, and rather lonely. Her name was Mrs. Calloway, and she came, as she vaguely explained, from "across the river."

"It isn't as easy to get acquainted here as I thought it would be," she admitted naïvely, "Still," she added with her dimpling smile, "I expect folks will be friendly enough, once they get to know me, don't you think?"

"Of course they will!" murmured Joan quite sincerely; for despite the woman's patent vulgarity, there was something attractive about her. One felt above all things that she was kind; and just then kindness meant a good deal to the lonely girl.

This kindness began at once to manifest itself. Elaborate desserts and salads, in very ornate dishes, made their way across the alley to the Darcy table; obligations scrupulously returned by Ellen with pickles and preserves of her own making. There were other generosities, more difficult to return in kind; candy, automobile drives, hothouse flowers, the latter evidently meant for the grave where Mary Darcy lay among strangers.

Over these attentions Ellen Neal grumbled frequently. "Your pa certainly ain't noticin' much these days, or he'd never let you get so thick with a strange woman we don't know nothin' about, Joan."

"A strange lady, Ellen," corrected Joan with dignity.

"Humph! Lady is as lady does. Look at her face, all painted up like a sign-board!"

"Southern ladies quite frequently rouge," said Joan out of her recent observations; but she did not pursue the subject, for she herself had doubts as to her father's approval of this new acquaintance. Richard Darcy was no democrat. He had been heard frequently to state, as one rather proud of the confession, that he had no use whatever for the canaille (which he pronounced "canile.")

Hence she was a little embarrassed and uneasy when, one Sunday morning as she and her father were starting on their weekly visit to the one bit of his native soil owned so far by Richard Darcy—his wife's grave—a limousine drew up at their door, out of which beamed the face of Mrs. Calloway, beneath a broad pink hat.

"I suspected you'd be off to the cemetery this fine morning," she called out cheerily, "and I thought I'd come and take you, you and your father. Hop right in, both of you. No, it won't be a bit of trouble. I've nothing else to do, and I always did love a cemetery anyway—it's the first place I go to whenever I strike a new town."

Joan glanced nervously at her father, wondering how he would take this initial encounter with Mrs. Calloway. But after a moment's pause of sheer astonishment, the Major's native gallantry came to the rescue, and he advanced for the introduction with all the manner of one about to be presented at court.

They found themselves bowling along at a smart clip among the churchgoers and the more lively joy-riders, out for a Sunday's pleasure, which thronged the avenue that sultry August morning.

"Now isn't this better than a poky old street-car?" demanded Mrs. Calloway archly.

The Major responded in kind. "Undoubtedly! Particularly in the matter of company."

Joan's liking for her kind-hearted neighbor had suffered a sudden eclipse. Ellen was right about her—"Lady is as lady does." It was worse than vulgar to force herself upon them at such a time—it was unfeeling, indecent. She envied her father's poise. She had never seen him appear to such advantage as upon this trying occasion, in his new, cheap black suit which had not as yet had time to acquire spots and wrinkles, his fine features showing the ravages of sorrow, his handsome gray head bent courteously toward this voluble companion as though her every word were priceless. Manners, she reflected, cannot be assumed on occasion like garments, but are a part of the very texture of a personality. She could not imagine her father anything but suavely