"Helps!" In her stupefaction Mrs. Holly stopped her work and stared.

"Why, yes. I mean, you've got so many other rooms you can live in
those. You don't HAVE to live in here."

"'Have to live in here'!" ejaculated the woman, still too
uncomprehending to be anything but amazed.

"Yes. But do you have to KEEP all these things, and clean them and
clean them, like this, every day? Couldn't you give them to somebody,
or throw them away?"

"Throw--these--things--away!" With a wild sweep of her arms, the
horrified woman seemed to be trying to encompass in a protective
embrace each last endangered treasure of mat and tidy. "Boy, are you
crazy? These things are--are valuable. They cost money, and time
and--and labor. Don't you know beautiful things when you see them?"

"Oh, yes, I love BEAUTIFUL things," smiled David, with unconsciously
rude emphasis. "And up on the mountain I had them always. There was the
sunrise, and the sunset, and the moon and the stars, and my Silver
Lake, and the cloud-boats that sailed--"

But Mrs. Holly, with a vexed gesture, stopped him.

"Never mind, little boy. I might have known--brought up as you have
been. Of course you could not appreciate such things as these. Throw
them away, indeed!" And she fell to work again; but this time her
fingers carried a something in their touch that was almost like the
caress a mother might bestow upon an aggrieved child.

David, vaguely disturbed and uncomfortable, watched her with troubled
eyes; then, apologetically, he explained:--

"It was only that I thought if you didn't have to clean so many of
these things, you could maybe go to walk more--to-day, and other days,
you know. You said--you didn't have time," he reminded her.

But Mrs. Holly only shook her head and sighed:--

"Well, well, never mind, little boy. I dare say you meant all right.
You couldn't understand, of course."

And David, after another moment's wistful eyeing of the caressing
fingers, turned about and wandered out onto the side porch. A minute
later, having seated himself on the porch steps, he had taken from his
pocket two small pieces of folded paper. And then, through tear-dimmed
eyes, he read once more his father's letter.

"He said I mustn't grieve, for that would grieve him," murmured the
boy, after a time, his eyes on the far-away hills. "And he said if I'd
play, my mountains would come to me here, and I'd really be at home up
there. He said in my violin were all those th