courteous, even under the most untoward circumstance.

Nevertheless, beneath her pride in him lingered an odd fear lest, now that he had an audience, he might be moved to oratory over her mother's grave. With Richard Darcy emotion and the expression of it were usually simultaneous. Joan's unresponsiveness (a trait which she hated in herself, but could not help) had hitherto kept her father somewhat in check; but in the presence of a kindly warmth of sympathy like Mrs. Calloway's there was no telling what might happen.

The Major, however, contented himself with murmuring, as he approached the grave, "She was very, very dear to me!" in so touching a voice that Mrs. Calloway openly wiped her eyes, exclaiming, "You poor man! Don't you think I understand—I, who've laid away two of them?"

Joan moved hastily out of earshot, leaving the pair to reminiscence. Talk of things that hurt was to the girl like pouring acid upon an open wound; but if it helped her poor father, by all means let it help him. She had never made the mistake of thinking that because his grief was facile it was any the less strong and real. His utter helplessness, his stunned amaze that the wife he so sorely needed could have gone away and left him to bear the vicissitudes of life without her, were as piteous to his daughter as the wailing grief of a child. If she could have comforted him in any way other than by speech she would have done so. In the presence of great emotion she was dumb—though she sometimes thought she might be able to write him what she felt. Often at night she lay awake for hours, wondering how she could drive out of his eyes that baffled, frightened look which always came when things went wrong with him, and which only her mother had been able to banish....

It haunted her all through the months which followed, that look of her father's; and sometimes in the midst of school-girl gaieties she would fall suddenly silent, thinking that she had no right to enjoy herself because he was there alone in the city of his childhood which seemed to have forgotten him. Joan was not yet quite the hard young egotist she intended to become.

And so when toward the end of her journey the train slid into a pleasant country, mellow with the evening sun, long reaches of rolling pasture and hill and fertile bottom-land that meant Kentucky, something welled up in the girl's heart deeper than glamour of place, stronger than regret for her sheltered little past, than fear and hope for her unguessed future; perhaps the deepest and strongest feeling life plants in the human soul—the blood-tie. Weak or brave, fraud or fool or honorable gentleman—perhaps a little of all these things—it was her father who waited there for a woman to come and make him a home again; and Joan was ready.

CHAPTER IV

The fellow-traveler who had incurred Miss Darcy's displeasure by a too-active sympathy was much pleased, being of a sentimental turn of mind, to witness a family reunion which presently took place in the station at Louisville. A tall, slender gentleman of a youngish Confederate colonel type—gray mustache and imperial, with a soft hat set very slightly to one side of his handsome head—detached himself from the crowd with a cry of, "Here I am, Dollykins!"

Whereupon the girl dropped all her belongings, and cast herself upon him speechless, to be lifted well off the ground and hugged and kissed very thoroughly.

"Fine! She's got a father, anyway, and a bully old bird at that," thought the young man, who had never owned either father or mother or much of anything else that he could remember. It was his further privilege to hurry after the pair with a suit-case, some magazines, and a box of candy which both had characteristically forgotten.

He was thanked by Major Darcy with an affable smile, and by his daughter with a curt, impersonal nod of dismissal after Sister Mary Joseph's best manner; which also pleased him, for he was by no means a thin-skinned young man, and preferred his gentlewomen haughty. He followed the pair far enough to observe the vehicle to which the father was obviously conducting her.

"Humph!" he said to himself; "rich people!" and turned away, rather disappointed. (Why this should be, the writer cannot say, being merely a chronicler of facts.)

Joan's flow of excited babble paused as she herself saw this vehicle. "Goodness! Are we going home in a taxicab? What grandeur!" she murmured, mentally figuring out the tariff. Then the monogram on the door enlightened her.

"Oh, it's Mrs. Calloway's," she said, relieved, a little ashamed to have quite forgotten the existence of their well-meaning neighbor. "How good of her to send it for me!" she added with a giggle, recalling her recent game of Pretend. "All you need to do to complete the picture, Daddy, is to say, 'Home, James!'"

Major Darcy obligingly murmured, "Home, James!" The chauffeur touched his cap, and enclosed them in the perfumed elegance of the limousine.

Joan gave a crow of laughter, and rubbed her cheek affectionately against her father's sleeve. This was like old times indeed, happy old times, when in his lighter moments the Major had frequently entered into the spirit of her play. The contact of his sleeve was unusually soft, and she suddenly held him at arm's length to see him better.

"Why, Major Darcy! If you haven't gone and bought yourself a new suit in honor of the occasion. A beauty, too!"

He surveyed what he could of himself complacently. "The fellow has given me rather a good fit, I think."

Joan gasped. "'The fellow!' Then it's not a ready-made—you've actually been to a tailor for it? Oh, Daddy darling!" she cried excitedly, "have you been making money?"

The Major's eyebrows lifted. "I believe," he remarked, "that I have usually made money, have I not? Sufficient, at least, to keep my family comfortable."

Joan was reminded with a jerk of Darcy traditions. "Of course!" She flushed. "I didn't mean—"

And suddenly she realized that the look she had been so long dreading to see in his eyes, that expression of anxiety which was almost fear, had quite disappeared. There was an air about him of security, of nonchalance, as one who would say, "Bring on your Indians! Who's afraid?" (Not that the Major would have condescended to know the meaning of the family expression, "Indians.")

Joan gave his hand a quick little squeeze that was oddly maternal. "I'm so glad, Dad," she said quietly; and went on to speak of other things.

They turned into the street where home was. Silence fell upon her. The prospect of facing her mother's absence was more difficult than she had thought it would be. At least there was Ellen to comfort her; gruff, matter-of-fact old Ellen, always at her crossest when most deeply moved. She pinned her thoughts to Ellen.

The Major's recent prosperity seemed not to have affected his dwelling-place as yet. As they drew near, Joan saw even in the dusk that the little lawn in front needed attention; nor was there so much as a light in the window to greet her—Ellen was always so careful about the gasbill. Then, as the limousine did not stop, she realized the For Rent sign on the door.

"Why, Dad, we've moved!" she cried with an odd pang at her heart. "Oh, but where?"

"Wait and see. 'Lay-lows for meddlers,'" he smiled, pleased with his little stage-effect.

The limousine bowled smoothly around the corner into the fashionable avenue beyond; and Joan thought, with a habit of anxiety beyond her years, that the new money would not last long if they were to live in such a neighborhood as this. But they stopped at a door she remembered, an imposing door with a porte-cochère, where, still as in her game of Pretend, a lady in a tea-gown stood waiting for them. Not, however, her mother.

"Here you are at last, girlie!" cried the cheery voice of Mrs. Calloway; and she was received into a voluminous pink chiffon embrace, highly scented with the latest thing in