ar upon
them the weight of the general knowledge of evil, but it is none the
less awful to come face to face on a street corner with one who was the
pretty village girl, whom you last saw standing behind the neat counter
with a pitcher of honeysuckles at her elbow as she filled a bag with
sugar cookies for your clamouring babies.

* * * * *

I suppose that I must have exclaimed aloud, for Jennie started back and
saw us, then dropped her bag and began to grope about for it as if she
was in a dream.

"Can't we do something?" I whispered to Evan, but he only gravely
shook his head.

"Give her this for the boys' sake," I begged, fumbling in his change
pocket and finding a bill there. "Tell her it's home money from the
Doctor's daughter--and--to go home--or--buy--a--pair of shoes."

At first I thought she was not going to take it; but having found her bag
she straightened herself a moment, and without looking at Evan gave me a
glance, half defiant, half beseeching, grasped the money almost fiercely,
and scuttled away in the darkness, and I found that I was crying. But
Evan understood,--he always does,--and I hope that if the boys read this
little book fifteen or twenty years hence, that they will also.

[Illustration: FEBRUARY VIOLETS.]

As we reached the door the first snowflakes fell. Poor Jennie!

* * * * *

The third day of our stay began in country quiet. In fact we did not wake
up until eight; everything was snowbound, and even the occasional horse
cars that pass the front of the house had ceased their primitive
tinkling. The milkman did not come, neither did the long crispy French
rolls, a New York breakfast institution for which the commuters
confessedly have no substitute, and it was after nine before breakfast
was served.

Evan, who had disappeared, returned at the right moment with his
newspaper and two bulky tissue paper bundles all powdered with snow, one
of which he gave to Miss Lavinia, the other to me. I knew their contents
the moment I set eyes on them, and yet it was none the less a
heart-warming surprise.

Down in a near-by market is a little florist's shop, so small that one
might pass twenty times without noticing it; the man, a local authority,
who has kept it for years, makes a specialty of the great long-stemmed
single violets, whose fleeting fragrance no words may express. They call
them Californias now, but they are evidentl