bright as the gay geraniums blooming on the spotless sill of the kitchen window that faced the Everett house.

Fortune had come to the Quinns that day in the guise of a new lodger. He had taken the second floor bedroom which stretched across the back of the house. Because this room was very big and had a queer, rickety stairway leading to it from the outside of the house, it had never been rented. But with the other lodgers who lived in the front rooms and the tiny side bedroom and the parlor, which had been converted into a "light housekeeping suite," Mrs. Quinn managed to keep her little family most comfortably and to have a bit left over for such luxuries as the flowers, a few books, pretty pictures and crisp muslin curtains.

"Faith, Sheila," she had cried, coming into the kitchen where her daughter was preparing apples for the oven. "It's just as though Dame Fortune knew it was your birthday! Now you shall have your music!"

"Oh, mother!" cried the girl, dropping her paring knife. "How wonderful!" Then, hesitating: "But maybe I hadn't ought to! That much each week would make things easier if----"

But Mrs. Quinn snatched bowl, apples and knife from her daughter's hands. "Don't let's be worrying over what's ahead, sweetness! We'll just take what comes! Didn't I have my bit of music when I was a girl and don't I know the longings that are in you to have things that other girls have, lassie? It's a good daughter you are to me and it's you that has always made the hard things easier----" She stopped suddenly as though something in her throat choked the words. For answer Sheila caught the rough hands that knew only work now and kissed them.

Then these two, arms around one another, the bowl tipping dangerously between them, laughed together as though there had never been a single hardship in the world.

"We're two sillies--that's what we are! Now we must be about our work or the gentleman will come and the room won't be ready!"

"Who is he, mother?"

"Sure, child, and I scarcely asked him! His name is Marks and he said he was employed at the Everett Works. I only thought of you, dearie! After supper you run over and see Miss Sheehan about the lessons; two a week--and we'll have a man come to tune up the old piano and we'll just pull it out here where it will be warm and where I can listen to you!"

So their work--and there was much for their quick fingers to do before the room could be put in readiness for the new tenant and the supper prepared for the younger Quinns, would be made lighter by their happy plans!

But Patricia was too miserable to even glance across at the window where the pink geraniums bloomed. She did not want to think that there was anyone happy anywhere in the world.

Sighing deeply she curled herself on her bed, drew from underneath her pillow her beloved diary and wrote upon its open page:

"This is such a cruel, sad moment in my life that I must write about it although it is too bad to put it in my nice diary." (Monthly she and Angeline Snow, her dearest friend at Miss Prindle's, exchanged diaries.) "I have been left alone here by a fond but heartless mother and sister who thinks only of herself and her troubles and my father is here at home and he is left, too, only of course my father is a man and he has his business. But the very worst of all because they are afraid of measles and Cis says my hair will come out and that it will never be thick like hers anyway though I remember you and I said that we hated thick hair when it was yellow like hers they will not let me go back to my dear Prindles and so I am a prisoner in a gilded cage. My Aunt Pen is coming to live with us while my mother is away and I love her and she always lets me do everything I want to do but she is not like you or the other girls at school. And though I have lived here many summers as the poets say, I have no friends because there are only the children I used to meet at silly parties and my mother's friends who are polite and stupid and I shall pine with loneliness. It is all Celia's fault though mother says she is very ill and that she has worn herself out doing war work and she looked very pail and interesting and I guess maybe she worried when Lieut Chauncey Merideth fell out of his airplane but I guess he'll be more careful next time. You remember I never liked him though when he comes back from war though he is only in Texas I guess he'll treat me a little different for he will realise I am almost fourteen if he comes back in time and does not fall out again. I do love my mother but she has been most heartless leaving me sad and lonely and with nothing to do. But as old English Sparrow says there is always work for idle hands to do and I shall find something so as to write to you all about it. I am too old to spend my hours repining. I remember the words of E. Sparrow how we are captains of our souls and I shall keep saying that in my loneliness. I guess now I will go down and order the dessert for dinner----"

This sudden thought so comforted Patricia that she closed her diary quickly, put it back under the pillow, slipped off the bed and ran downstairs to the kitchen.

She found that Melodia, the cook, had already prepared mince tarts for dinner. They were spread temptingly upon a shelf. Patricia tasted one and immediately ordered Melodia to make nothing but mince tarts for dessert during her mother's absence! Perched on a stool Patricia asked several questions concerning the pleasant odors that came from the big oven. But Melodia seemed to be very indifferent as to the importance of her presence in the kitchen; Patricia was glad to remember that she had promised her mother to carry a report to the Red Cross Headquarters that very afternoon. So, slipping off her stool she stalked majestically away.

Now almost at the same moment that Sheila and Mrs. Quinn were laughing in their kitchen over their wonderful fortune and lonely Patricia was cheering her heart by tasting mince tarts, kind-hearted Mrs. Atherton, the official in charge at the Red Cross Headquarters on this October day, was wrinkling her pretty brows over an unusual situation.

Before her, watching her face anxiously, stood a man in the uniform of a captain of the United States Army.

"Perhaps I acted too hastily--bringing the child here, to leave on your hands, but--you can see how it happened; I'd given my word to that boy to take care of his little sister. If you could have known him! Why, there wasn't a fellow in my company that wouldn't have given up his life for him! They didn't need to--he did it first!" Capt. Allan's voice broke. "I got my orders back to the States and I just had time to go and find Renée."

"Wouldn't it have been better if you had left her somewhere in Paris?"

"You see you don't know the whole story, madam. This Emile LaDue was in the French uniform but he was sort of an American. And that was my promise--that I'd bring her back to America--somewhere. He didn't have time to say anything more--he gave me the address when we were in a shell hole waiting until it was dark enough to creep over to the enemy lines. We went out a few seconds afterwards--crawling along on our stomachs, he one way, I another. I--never saw him again."

Mrs. Atherton openly wiped her eyes.

The soldier went on: "I'd keep the little girl--just because I loved Emile LaDue, but I haven't any folks or any place to leave her and I have to report back over