im was necessary. He had been brought up by three
maiden aunts who thought that a man in the kitchen was out of his sphere,
so the kitchen was an unknown quantity to him.

Marcia entered the room as if she were not quite certain of her welcome.
She was coming into a kingdom she only half understood.

"Good morning," she said shyly, and a lovely color stole into her cheeks.
Once more David's conscience smote him as her waking beauty intensified
the impression made the night before.

"Good morning," he said gravely, studying her face as he might have
studied some poor waif whom he had unknowingly run over in the night and
picked up to resuscitate. "Are you rested? You were very tired last
night."

"What a baby I was!" said Marcia deprecatingly, with a soft little gurgle
of a laugh like a merry brook. David was amazed to find she had two
dimples located about as Kate's were, only deeper, and more gentle in
their expression.

"Did I sleep all the afternoon after we left the canal? And did you have
hard work to get me into the house and upstairs?"

"You slept most soundly," said David, smiling in spite of his heavy heart.
"It seemed a pity to waken you, so I did the next best thing and put you
to bed as well as I knew how."

"It was very good of you," said Marcia, coming over to him with her hands
clasped earnestly, "and I don't know how to thank you."

There was something quaint and old-fashioned in her way of speaking, and
it struck David pitifully that she should be thanking her husband, the man
who had pledged himself to care for her all his life. It seemed that
everywhere he turned his conscience would be continually reproaching him.

It was a dainty breakfast to which they presently sat down. There was
plenty of bread and fresh butter just from the hands of the best
butter-maker in the county; the eggs had been laid the day before, and the
bacon was browned just right. Marcia well knew how to make coffee, there
was cream rich and yellow as ever came from the cows at home and there
were blackberries as large and fine every bit as those Marcia picked but a
few days before for the purchase of her pink sprigged chintz.

David watched her deft movements and all at once keen smiting conscience
came to remind him that Marcia was defrauded of all the loving interchange
of mirth that would have been if Kate had been here. Also, keener still
the thought that Kate had not wanted it: that she had preferred the love
of a