tina Battle was in the
anteroom. He rose hurriedly. "I will see her at once," he said, and he
opened the door as Miss Chris came in, panting softly from her ascent in
the elevator.

She had changed so little that he took her hand in sudden timidity,
recalling the days when he had sold her chickens before her hen-house
door. But when he had settled her in one of the cane rocking-chairs
beside the stove, his confidence returned and he responded heartily to
her beneficent beam. Her florid face, shining large and luminous above
the stiff black strings of her bonnet, reminded him of illustrations he
had seen in which the sun is endowed with human features and an
enveloping smile.

"This is the greatest honour my office has brought me," he said with
sincerity.

She laughed softly, smoothing her black kid glove above her plump wrist.

"I don't know what they mean by saying you aren't a lady's man, Governor
Burr," she returned. "I am sure old Judge Blitherstone himself never
turned a prettier compliment, and he lived to be upwards of ninety and
did them better every day of his life. They used to say that when Mrs.
Peachy Tucker dropped in to see him as he was breathing his last, and
told him to look forward to the joys of heaven and the communion of
saints, he replied, 'Madam, if you remain with me I shall merely pass
from one heaven to another,' and they were his last words."

The governor smiled into her beautiful, girlish eyes. "Men have spoken
worse ones," he said, her kindliness warming him like a cordial.

"It was good of you to come," he added.

"Not a bit of it," protested Miss Chris with emphasis. "It's all about
that poor, foolish boy--he's still a boy to me, and so are you for that
matter. You know how wicked he has been and how miserable he has made us
all, for you can't stop loving people just because they are bad. Now you
are a good man, Governor Burr, and that's why I came to you. You'll do
right if it kills you, and whatever you do in this matter is going to
be the right thing. You can't help being good any more than he can help
being bad, and I hope the Lord understands this as well as I do--I don't
know, I'm sure--sometimes it looks as if He didn't; but we'd just as
well trust Him, because there's nothing else for us to do.

"Now the foolish boy wronged you more than he wronged us; but you'll
forgive him as we forgave him, when you know what he's suffered. It's
better to be sinned against than to sin,