dear little lad he is!" exclaimed Jean.

Aunt Cheerful bent and turned the dying log.

"A kindly, courteous little gentleman, ever-mindful of my poor lame foot;" she said thoughtfully, "with his proud, boyish heart afire with dreams—dreams of becoming a very great doctor and a gallant gentleman. Why, my dear, his father was such a queer hermit who lived with this little son of his in a ruined shack along the river, a ragged, handsome, silent man of very great culture, 'twas said, and this fall when he died the boy refused to leave his crazy hut. A chore here and a chore there, so he lives, a wee, lovable, busy little hermit, selling his newspapers, sweeping out the school and the church, and doctoring all the sick animals about with arnica and witch-hazel. To be sure a hundred friendly eyes in Westowe watch over him in secret but few dare offer him any aid."

"But why 'Lord Chesterfield'?"

"I have read him such portions of Lord Chesterfield as I deemed suitable," replied Aunt Cheerful, "and we play our little game at his request that he may grow familiar with the ways and words of gentlemen."

And Jean Varian brushed something away from her long dark lashes that sparkled suspiciously like a tear. Surely Aunt Cheerful and gallant Lord Chesterfield were worth the many, many miles of the rainy journey!

"And now, my dear, to bed!" suggested Aunt Cheerful, smiling and with a busy tap! tap! of her crutch she was briskly leading the way up the winding stairway to a room above.

A smell of pine, the lighting of a lamp, the quick crackle of dry wood as Aunt Cheerful bent over a tiny fire-place, and Jean uttered a cry of admiration. Pine cones and branches showered in pattern across the wall-paper and the carpet; pine-sprigged chintz covered the old-fashioned chairs, and from somewhere a pine pillow gave forth the fragrance of the winter forest.

"My Pine Bough Bedroom!" exclaimed Aunt Cheerful delightedly; "and how glad I am you like it. And I furnished it so, my dear, in a little wave of superstition. An old and wrinkled gypsy was passing through my lane and when I called her in for a cup of tea, what do you suppose she said? 'Kind lady, great happiness will come to you one day in the heart of the Christmas pines!' Doubtless an idle phrase that came to her with the smell of the pine but I often think of it. Good night, my dear."

But Jean laid an impetuous hand upon the old lady's shoulder.

"Aunt Cheerful," she said gently, "you have not once asked me my name!"

"Why neither I have, my dear," nodded Aunt Cheerful, "but then I fancied you would tell me yourself if you wished me to know."

Jean colored hotly.

"Aunt Cheerful," she said hurriedly, "there are reasons, for a time at least, why—why I can not tell you my name or why I have come to Westowe! Oh, I do hope you will not misunderstand me. May I not," she added pleadingly, "join in name that little group of nobility to which Lord Chesterfield and Lady Cheerful belong?"

"Why to be sure, you may!" exclaimed Aunt Cheerful, smiling. "I shall call you the Lady Ariel for you came to me like a beautiful spirit out of the wind and rain. Good night, dear."

Very thoughtfully, Jean loosened the shining masses of her dark hair and brushed it.

"The Lady Ariel!" she mused, smiling. "And surely as whimsical a guest as any spirit of the air might be." Absently the girl's eyes rested upon a book, exquisitely bound in Levant, on a table near-by. It bore the title "Songs of Cheer" and with a smile at the eternal cheeriness of this chance shelter of hers, the girl opened it.

And as the Lady Ariel read, her beautiful face flamed scarlet, and shaking queerly, she dropped to her knees by the snowy bed, all her superb self-possession gone in a passionate fit of weeping.

Brush! brush! went the dripping pines against the window in a ceaseless monody, and presently this very strange guest of Aunt Cheerful's raised her head. Very white and strained her face but her eyes were shining.

III

Now although Lady Ariel was never quite sure just how it all came about, night found her still at Pine Tree Cottage, and again at dawn she watched Lord Chesterfield at his furtive tasks. And so, eventually, swept away again and again by the warmth of Aunt Cheerful's hospitality, Jean came to linger on at the cottage in the pines, thrilled unaccountably by the unquestioning friendliness of her cheery hostess.

Each night when the mail train came in, Aunt Cheerful's lamp flashed its friendly message through the pines; each night her birdlike voice carried its invitation into the dark of the lane. And sometimes it was a weary villager, homing through the twilight, who answered her call and sometimes an astonished stranger lured into the lane by the smell of the pine and the brightness of her light. But to all the welcome was the same. Aunt Cheerful's cosmic hospitality made no distinctions, and presently Jean came to know that the fame of Pine Tree Cottage was county-wide.

And as