watching her suspiciously. The place was homely yet severe, clean but disorderly, and the strangest touch of all was the big loose bunch of apple-blossoms in an old earthen jar in the corner, the pink and white of the fragile blooms contrasting charmingly with the dull tintings of the earthenware, and bringing the fragrance of spring into the little room. Their grouping, and the corner in which he had placed them, where the light just caught the beauty of the delicate petals, arrested Diana’s thought.

[45]

“You are an artist,” she remarked approvingly; “or else—was it an accident?”

He followed her glance and smiled, and she noticed that, in spite of the rugged strength and homeliness of his face, his rare smile had almost the sweetness of a woman’s. “Not altogether accident,” he said, “but the falling of the light which seems to lift them out[46] of the shadows behind them. Isn’t it fair that I should have something beautiful in this shabby place?”

[46]

Diana colored; had he noticed her survey and again thought her discourteous? She could say nothing to refute its shabbiness and, for the moment, her usual tact deserted her. She sat looking at the apple-blossoms in silence while he rose from his place as fire-feeder, and, going to the kitchen, came back with a cup of hot tea.

“You had better drink this,” he advised quietly; “I’m afraid you’ll take cold. I hope the tea will be right; you see I am ‘the cook and the captain too.’”

She took the cup, obediently again, and feeling like a naughty child. “It is excellent,” she said, tasting it; “I didn’t know a mere man could make such good tea.”

He laughed. “Once or twice, you know, men have led a forlorn hope. I sometimes feel like that when I attack the domestic mysteries.”

“Courage has its own rewards—even in tea, then!” she retorted, wondering if all the men who lived thus alone knew how to do so many things for themselves? In her experience it had been the other way. Colonel Royall was as helpless as a baby and needed almost as much care, and Jacob Eaton had a scornful disregard of domestic details, only demanding his own comforts, and expecting that his adoring mother would provide them without annoying him with even the[47] ways and means. It occurred to Diana that, perhaps, it was the wide difference in social position, that gentlemen might be helpless in matters where the humbler denizens of the earth had to be accomplished; that, in short, Caleb Trench 

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