t many times, Ingua?"

"I don't know much 'bout Marm, an' I don't care whether she's sorry or
not. But I do know I need an eddication. If Mary Louise hadn't had no
eddication she'd 'a' been just like me: a bit o' junk on a scrap-heap,
that ain't no good to itself ner anybody else."

He mused silently for a while, getting up finally and walking over to
the door.

"Your peculiarities of expression," he then remarked, as if more to
himself than to the child, "are those we notice in Sol Jerrems and Joe
Brennan and Mary Ann Hopper. They are characteristic, of the rural
population, which, having no spur to improve its vocabulary, naturally
grows degenerate in speech."

She glanced at him half defiantly, not sure whether he was "pokin' fun
at her" or not.

"If you mean I talks country talk," said she, "you're right. Why
shouldn't I, with no one to tell me better?"

Again he mused. His mood was gentle this evening.

"I realize I have neglected you," he presently said. "You were thrust
upon me like a stray kitten, which one does not want but cannot well
reject. Your mother has not supplied me with money for your education,
although she has regularly paid for your keep."

"She has?" cried Ingua, astounded. "Then you've swindled her an' me
both, for I pays for more'n my keep in hard work. My keep? For the love
o' Mike, what does my keep amount to? A cent a year?"

He winced a little at her sarcasm but soon collected himself. Strangely
enough, he did not appear to be angry with her.

"I've neglected you," he repeated, "but it has been an oversight. I
have had so much on my mind that I scarcely realized you were here. I
forgot you are Nan's child and that you--you needed attention."

Ingua put on her new hat, looking into a cracked mirror.

"Ye might 'a' remembered I'm a Cragg, anyhow," said she, mollified by
his tone of self reproach. "An' ye might 'a' remembered as _you're_ a
Cragg. The Craggs orter help each other, 'cause all the world's ag'in
'em."

He gave her an odd look, in which pride, perplexity and astonishment
mingled.

"And you are going into the enemy's camp to-night?"

"Oh, Mary Louise is all right. She ain't like them other snippy girls
that sometimes comes here to the big houses. _She_ don't care if I _am_
a Cragg, or if I talks country. I like Mary Louise."

When she had gone the old man sat in deep thought for a long time. The
summer evening cast shadows; twilight fell; darkness gradually shroud