in his eyes less of pain than of utter comprehension. He said not a word, while she bit her lip and stared again into the fire, clenching the fist that had spoken for her bitterly aching heart. After a time the tense fingers relaxed, and she held up the hand and looked at it.

"I'm a brute!" she said presently. "An abominable little brute. How do you stand me? How do you endure me, Father Davy! I just bind the load on your poor back and pull the knots tight, every time I let myself break out like this. If you were any minister-father but yourself, you'd either preach or pray at me. How can you keep from it?"14

14

He smiled. "I never liked to be preached or prayed at myself, dear," he said. "I have not forgotten. And the Lord Himself doesn't expect a young caged lioness to act like a caged canary. He doesn't want it to. And some day—He will let it out of the cage!"

She shook her head, and got up. She kissed the gray curls and patted the thin cheek, said cheerfully: "I'm going to get your supper now," and went away out of the room.

In the square old kitchen she flung open an outer door and stood staring up at the starry winter sky.

"Oh, if anything, anything, anything would happen!" she breathed, stretching out both arms toward the snowy shrubbery-broken expanse behind the house which in summer was her garden. "If something would just keep this evening from being like all the other evenings! I can't sit and read aloud—to-night. I can't—I can't! And the only interesting thing on earth that can happen is that Jimps Stuart may come over—and he probably won't, because he was over last evening and the evening before that, and he knows he can't be allowed to come all the time. He——"

It was at this point that the old brass knocker on the front door sounded—and something happened.

15

CHAPTER II

SOMETHING REALLY HAPPENS

It might have been any of the village people, as Georgiana expected it would be when she closed the kitchen door with a bang and went reluctantly to answer the knock. Since it was almost suppertime it was probably Mrs. Shear, who seldom made a call at any other hour, knowing she would as surely be asked to stay as it was sure that David Warne's heart would respond to the wanness and unhappiness always written on Mrs. Shear's homely middle-aged face. As she 

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