it tight on the lid of her grief and fear and
anxiety.

But there were hours when the cover lifted a little. No girl, not the
bravest, could avoid such altogether. Elliott didn't think herself
brave, not a bit. She knew merely that the thing she had to do
couldn't be done if there were many such hours.

One day Bruce heard somebody sobbing up in the hay-loft. The sound
didn't carry far; it was controlled, suppressed; but Bruce had gone up
the ladder for something or other, I forget just what, and, thinking
Priscilla was in trouble, he kept on. The girl crying, face down in
the hay, wasn't Priscilla. Very softly Bruce started to tiptoe away,
but the rustling of the hay under his feet betrayed him.

"I didn't mean--any one to--find me."

"Shall I go away?"

She shook her head. "I can't stand it!" she wailed. "I simply can't
_stand it_!" And she sobbed as though her heart would break.

Bruce sat down beside the girl on the hay and patted the hand nearest
him. He didn't know anything else to do. Her fingers closed on his
convulsively.

"I'm an awful old cry-baby," she choked at last. "I'll behave myself,
in a minute."

"No, cry away," said Bruce. "A girl has to cry sometimes."

After a while the racking sobs spent themselves. "There!" she said,
sitting up. "I never thought I'd let a boy see me cry. Now I must go
in and help Trudy get supper."

She dabbed at her eyes with a wet little wad of linen. Bruce plucked a
clean handkerchief from his pocket and tucked it into her fingers.

"Yours doesn't seem quite big enough for the job," he said.

She took it gratefully. She had never thought of a boy as a very
comforting person, but Bruce was. "Oh, Bruce, you _know_!"

"Yes, I know."

"It's so--so lonely. Dad's all I've got, of my really own, in the
world."

He nodded. "You're gritty, all right."

"Why, Bruce Fearing! how can you say that after the way I've acted?"

"That's why I say it."

"But I'm scared all the time. If I did what I wanted to, I'd be a
perpetual fountain."

"And you're not."

She stared at him. "Is being scared and trying to cover it up what you
call grit?"

"The grittiest kind of grit."

For a sophisticated girl she was singularly naive, at times. He
watched her digest the idea, sitting up on the hay, her chin cupped in
her two hands, straws in her hair. Her eyes were swollen and her nose
red, and his handkerchief was now almost as wet as her own. "I thought
I was an awful coward,