r pity her.

The result was a delightful picture that filled Bud's heart with
admiration. And for perhaps the thousandth time he silently
anathematized the blind folly of the man who had wilfully cast his eyes
in another direction.

Nan seated herself in one of the luxuriously inviting armchairs, while
Bud insinuated his huge form on to the polished surface of a large
central table.

"You know, Daddy, I sort of feel like a feller who's guessed the right
answer to a question he hadn't a notion of. Maybe you won't get just
how I mean." The smile in her pretty eyes changed to a deep
seriousness. "You know when I was a little teeny girl all mud and
overall, that never could keep me within measurable distance of being
clean, you used to talk to me just as if you were speaking your
thoughts aloud. Guess it was about the time poor Momma died, or maybe
soon after. I kind of remember you were squatting Indian fashion on
the veranda of our shack, I'd been busy in the hopes of drowning myself
in a half dry mud hole, and had mostly succeeded in absorbing more of
the dirt than seemed good for a single meal. Guess I must have started
to cry, and you'd reached out and grabbed me, and fetched me up on your
lap, and were handing me a few words you reckoned to cheer me up with.
Do you remember them, my Daddy? I don't guess you do. I didn't till a
while later, and then I didn't figure out their meaning till I went to
school. You said, 'Tears is only for kiddies an' grown women. Kiddies
mostly cry because they don't understand, an' grown women because they
do. Anyway, neither of 'em need to cry, if they only get busy an'
think a while. Ther' ain't a thing in this life calls for a tear from
a living soul, not even a stomachful of moist mud, 'cos, you see,
ther's Someone who fixes everything the way it should go, an' it's the
right way. So we'll jest give you a dose of physic to help boost the
show along.'" She glanced round her with smiling eyes at the
tastefully arrayed furnishings of the parlor. "This has been the dose
of physic I gave myself, and--and I feel better for it. I had the mud,
and, why, the tears came just as they did before. Maybe if I'd been
able to think right I wouldn't have shed them. But I just couldn't
think right then. But I've thought since, and the physic's helped me.
Do--do you think he'll like it all?"

The contemplative gaze of her father was full of gentle amusement.

"Sure he will--if h