.
They detected each other laying small traps for him, and were ashamed.
They held their breath as with an air of cheerful unconsciousness he
walked past the traps, escaping them one and all. At first in her
irritation Miss Bracy accused him of what she (of all women!) called
false pride. "He is ashamed of her. He wishes to forget, and is only
too glad that we began by encouraging him." On second thoughts she knew
the charge to be undeserved and odious. His obvious simplicity gave it
the lie. Moreover she knew that a small water-colour sketch of her in
her youth--a drawing of Mr. Frank's--stood on the table in the boy's
bedroom. Miss Bracy often dusted that room with her own hands.

"And, Frank," she confessed one day, "he kisses it! I know by the
dullness on the glass when I rub it." She did not add that she rubbed
it viciously. "I tell you," she insisted, almost with a groan,
"he lives with her. She is with him in this house in spite of us; she
talks with him; his real existence is with her. He comes out of it to
make himself pleasant to us, but he goes back and tells her his
secrets."

"Nonsense, Laura," Mr. Frank interrupted testily. "For some reason or
other the boy is getting on your nerves. It is natural, after all."

"Natural? Yes, I see: you mean that I'm an old maid, and it's a case of
crabbed age and youth."

"My dear Laura, I mean nothing so rude. But, after all, we have been
living here a great many years and it _is_ a change."

"Frank, you can be singularly dense at times. Must I tell you in so
many words that I am fond of the boy, and if he'd be only as fond of me
he might racket the house down and I'd only like him the better for it?"

Mr. Frank rubbed his head, and then with sudden resolution marched out
of the house in search of Victor. He found the boy on the roof removing
a patent cowl which the local mason had set up a week before to cure the
smoky chimney.

"My dear fellow," the father cried up, "you'll break your neck!
Come down at once--I have something particular to say to you."

Victor descended with the cowl under his arm. "Do be careful. . . .
Doesn't it make you giddy, clambering about in places like that?"
Mr. Frank had no head at all for a height.

"Not a bit. . . . Just look at this silly contrivance--choked with soot
in three days! The fellow who invented it ought to have his head
examined."

"It has made you in a horrible mess," said his father, who took