it?" she asked at once, and put her hand
out to him. "I heard Father say that he was expecting you. And then,
too, a friend of yours, who seemed much concerned about your fate over
at Poetical, rode to our house last night and made me promise to welcome
you to Canaan. I am Sally Madeira."

"Hi, Pet, you there?" Madeira's big voice came through the door of the
private office and took possession of the minute and the
girl--"entertain the New Yorker until I get through here, will you? I
got to monkey with this blasted lock again."

"Yes, Father, I'm entertaining him," Madeira's daughter called back,
while Bruce held helplessly to the hand she had given him. A peculiar
mistiness had come over his senses. He could have sworn that through it
he saw a picture that had been with him a good deal during the past year
of his life, a picture of a woman's flower face, her fluffiness,--as of
silk and lace,--lose colour, outline, significance, like a daguerreotype
in the sunlight. A swift joy that he was in Canaan possessed him. All he
could say was, "So you are Miss Sally?" It sounded very dull, so dull
that he hastened to add, "So you know Piney?--Awfully kind of Piney to
attract your attention to me." Remembering with horror some of his
conversation with Piney about Miss Madeira, he repeated solemnly,
"Awfully kind."

"Well, I think you can give the little vagabond credit for a kind
heart." Miss Madeira laughed softly.

"I give him credit for much more than that," said Bruce. He was envying
Piney, seeing that the tramp-boy's intuitive appreciations matched his
vigorous young beauty, that he was far more poet than vagabond, that he,
Bruce, had attempted to play clownishly upon what was a worthy and
lovely idyl in the boy's heart. As though she, too, had some faint,
perturbing consciousness of Piney, the girl flushed a little, laughed a
little, and turned the subject readily.

"I know yet another friend of yours," said she.

"I am glad of that." Bruce had released her hand, forgotten the business
that had brought him to Missouri, forgotten Crittenton Madeira, and
stood with his arms folded, looking down upon her, glad that she was so
tall, glad that he was taller, glad about everything.

"Yes, another friend," she nodded with fleeting meaning, "I was at
Vassar with Elsie Gossamer."

Face to face with a woman like Sally Madeira the thought of a woman like
Miss Gossamer must necessarily stay hazy in a man's brain. As with
an