roused me again."

"He has done a great deal for you?" asked Beth with sympathy.

"Everything in the world!" answered Miss Cynthia warmly, not having resumed her manner. "Since our grandfather died Peveril has been my protector, though he is two years younger. You know we were very poor at first."

"Very poor?"

"We had nothing but debts," stated Miss Cynthia. "We lived in boarding-houses for seven years before Peveril could buy the homestead and get the strangers out of it. It was a proud day when he brought me here, and told me this was mine to live in until the end of my life. And yet for two years more I went daily to my work—I was in Benjamin's great dry-goods store, my dear—until when they asked me to be the head of[Pg 46] the linen department Peveril said I should work no more, and insisted on my staying at home."

[Pg 46]

"I never heard of that," cried Beth. "That you were ever in Benjamin's!"

"And a very good saleswoman I was," said Miss Cynthia. "But after that the money began to come in to us, and Peveril sold the land where the Security Building now is. I have not done a piece of work since then, except for Peveril or for charity. I am a rich woman, my dear."

"But you do so much for charity!" exclaimed Beth with enthusiasm.

When it came to praise, Miss Pease became grim at once. "I've got to keep busy with something," she snapped.

"But tell me more," begged Beth.

"There is nothing more," declared Miss Cynthia. "And now I hear him coming, five minutes before the hour, just as he always does. Don't be afraid of him; he has the softest heart in the world, as you ought to discover, since you had the skill to find mine."

Beth had only the time to squeeze her friend's hand as the two stood up together. She had discovered Miss Pease's heart; it was an unconscious specialty of Beth's to find the weak points in the armour of forbidding persons, and she had on her list of friends more of the lonely and unknown than had many a worker in organised charity. She was, in fact, a worker in her own special field, the well-to-do, bringing them the sympathy and affection which they needed as much as do the poor. She had neither shrewdness nor experience; what she did was quite unconscious, 

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