Cheyney nodded, pursing his lips. Henk jogged on.

“It’s a long time,” said Diana, “I was only three years old.”

[56]“Let it be, my girl,” the old man counseled; “we can’t enter the upper chamber of the soul, you know. David’s got to fight it out. Sometimes”—the doctor let the reins go so slack that old Henk walked—“sometimes grief is like a raw cut, Diana, and we can’t put in a few stitches either; got to leave that to Providence.”

[56]

“He isn’t well,” Diana insisted.

“He’d be no better for my meddling,” Dr. Cheyney retorted, unmoved.

“I wanted him to go East with me,” she continued, “to go to New York.”

Dr. Cheyney glanced up quickly. “And he wouldn’t?”

Diana shook her head.

“Don’t you ask it,” cautioned the old man. “It’s the time of year when your father’s full of notions; let him be.”

“The time of year”—Diana met the doctor’s kindly eyes—“when mother died?”

William Cheyney turned red. The girl, looking at him, saw the dull red stealing up to the old man’s white hair and wondered.

“Yes,” he said.

“Do I look like her?” Diana asked, after a moment of perplexed thought.

“No!” said Dr. Cheyney shortly.

Old Henk had climbed the last hill,—the one that always seems to meet the sky until you have climbed it,—and there, below it, unfolded the wide valley[57] with the brown of new-plowed fields and the long strips of lovely foliage. The mist of the rain was molten gold now, and a rainbow spanned the sky.

[57]

“I wish I did!” Diana sighed regretfully.

“You’re the handsomest woman in the State,” the old doctor retorted tartly. “What more do you want?”

“The kingdoms of earth,” replied Diana, and laughed 

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