rd embarrassment. She had small, regular
features of the kind that remain the same from childhood to old age, and
her liver-colored hair rolled in a billow almost to her eyes.

"Maybe you'll think it strange for me to come," she began, "but I didn't
know what else to do. I'm Ruby Adair."

She waited a little, but her statement awoke no response in Lib's
noncommittal face.

"I don't know whether you know what they're saying over at the store or
not," the visitor went on haltingly.

"No," said Lib, with dry indifference; "there ain't any men in our
family to do the loafin' and gossipin' for us."

"Since you moved over here from Bunch Grass Valley, they're saying that
Thad Farnham is the--is--you know he was in the tile works over there a
year or more ago."

"Yes, I know." Lib's voice was like the crackling of dead leaves under
foot.

"I think it's pretty hard," continued Miss Adair, gathering courage, and
glancing from under the surf of her hair at her listener's impassive
face; "him and me's engaged!"

Lib's eyes narrowed, and the velvety down on her lip showed black
against the whiteness around her mouth.

"What does _he_ say?" she asked.

"What can he say?" Thad's fiancee broke out nervously, "except that it
ain't so. But that doesn't shut people's mouths. Nobody can do that but
you. I think"--she raised her chin virtuously and twisted her gloves
tight in her trembling hands--"that you ought to come out plain and tell
who the man is--I mean the--you know what I mean!"

"Yes," said Lib dully, "I know what you mean."

There was a little silence, broken only by the mad twitter of nesting
linnets in the passion-vine overhead.

"Of course," resumed the stranger, "I wouldn't want you to think but
what I'm sorry for you. You've been treated awful mean by somebody."

A surprised look grew in the eyes Lib fixed upon her visitor. The baby
stirred in its sleep, and she bent down and rubbed her cheek against its
hair.

"You needn't waste any time being sorry for me," she said.

"It's too bad," continued Miss Adair, intent upon her own exalted
charity, "but that doesn't make it right for you to get other folks into
trouble. You'd ought to remember that."

"If you think he's all right, why don't you go ahead and marry him?"
asked Lib.

"My folks would make such a fuss, and besides I don't know as it would
be just right for me to act like I didn't care, after all that's been
said--and me a church-member!"

M