wife and I.” Then, as Miz-zada moved delicately away, she would hear always the gentle boom of his voice behind[33] her—“A fine woman, sir, a fine, high-spirited woman ... all Tenafee.”

[33]

The excellent eggnog of which she partook with relish made her glow within and without; the sharp modeling of her pinched little face would soften with color; old Amos Tenafee, blinking at her, would step resolutely toward his duty, sweeping her under the mistletoe and kissing her generously. “An old man’s privilege, gentlemen!” he would assert defiantly to the young blades grouped about, although there were never any contenders—“An old man’s privilege!”

Just as the little cakes and sandwiches with the potation filled her with such a sense of luxurious repletion that she got herself no supper on the gas shelf and wakened faint and weak at five in the morning, so did the meeting and mingling, the high converse with her exalted clan nourish her spirit; it would be weeks before the crudities of her immediate environment brought a sense of hollowness again.

Her eyes were always faintly red rimmed, but there was, notwithstanding, a clear and rain-washed looked about her—the chastened brightness of one who has risen betimes and got her weeping out of the way early. There was subtle comedy about her, perhaps, for the discerning, but there was nothing giddy, nothing grotesque, and the young Glen found[34] herself growing steadily fonder of her. She asked her to supper once, pursuant to her father’s wish that she should make friends, but the affair was hardly a success.

[34]

“Whyn’t she play round with young ones of her own age?” Dr. Darrow asked himself wrathfully. “Why in time does she want to train with that old hen?” He was crusty, grudgingly hospitable, and Miz-zada, who had her own delicacies about going to widowers’ houses, never went again.

He piled her plate high with food and criticized her slender appetite rudely. She had always been, she stated, a small eater.

“You look it!” he rejoined briefly. “Live alone—cook for yourself? Thought so! Egg’n-cuppa-tea—malnutrition! I know your kind like a book.”

His attitude toward her put her into the same class with Effie; Glen began at once to protect her. It was rather a blow to have Miss Ada refuse to see the romance and drama in young Luke Manders, but she would, the girl privately thought, 

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