ttle range of Madeira Place.
Around them shut the strong walls of the old Peele house, a memorable
house in its way, massive and wide-porched and staunch.

"You can hardly imagine anything more different from this than was my
beginning," went on Madeira. "This is pretty luxurious, isn't it? In its
way, though it is down here on the Di, it's just about as good for a
country house as the places you saw on the Hudson, aint it?"

"Oh, it has a lot more soul and story than the Hudson places," she
acquiesced at once. Sometimes she could feel that desire of his to give
her as good as the best palpitate like a pulse through his words.

"Well, anyhow, Lord knows it's mighty different from what I began with,
Sally. Why, Honey, in my boy-days living on a farm in Missouri was
mighty much like living on the fringes of hellen-blazes. Br-r-rt!" He
clamped and unclamped his big hand, watching the strong muscle-play in
it. "I can feel my fingers burn to this day where the frozen fodder
sawed and rasped 'em in winter and the hot plough-handles bit and
blistered 'em in summer. And then, afterwards, those old St. Louis days
meant hard pulling, too, of another kind. From grocery clerk, to
dry-goods clerk, to old Peele's real estate office, it was pull, pull,
if not over one thing, over another. Takes a thundering lot of pulling
to pull out in this world, Sally." All in a minute his voice sounded
perplexed and resentful.

"Well, you did it, didn't you? You pulled out. I'm proud of you. I like
the way you did it."

"Do you, Pet? Do you like me?" he queried with a peculiar anxiety.

"Yes, sir, I do."

Black Chloe, who had been making slow trips between kitchen and
dining-room for some minutes, stopped now to say, in a sort of Arabian
Nights measure, "Ef you raddy fuh yo' brekfus, yo' brekfus raddy fuh
you."

"Better than anybody?" pursued Madeira, but his daughter was drawing him
to the table, and he did not notice that her only answer was a quivering
laugh.

They sat down to a breakfast-table whose delightful appearance was due
to that sense of colour in Sally Madeira's temperament. Both ate some
fruit, because it was juicy and went down easily, and both looked at
their coffee-cups.

"Why don't you eat your breakfast, Daddy?"

"Why don't you?" Perhaps if he had waited for her to tell him, her
gladness would have sent her story bubbling to her lips, but he did not
wait. "I'm bothered, Honey, that's why I can't eat."

"What's th