ut the animal's neck and was assuring him, as she might a human
being, that he had been sadly missed and would be most welcome home.

On his part the burro was fortunately silent, though his great, dark
eyes looked volumes of affection, and he laid his big ears gently back
to be out of Amy's way, while she caressed him. She smoothed his
forelock, ran her fingers through his mane, patted his shaggy head, and
told him that his "big velvet lips were the softest things on earth."

"Ahem!"

This remark, if such it could be called, fell upon Amy's ears so
suddenly that she half tumbled backward from her perch upon the manger,
and just saved herself by springing lightly down, or she thought it was
lightly, until she wheeled and faced the intruder.

None other than Archibald Wingate, making a horrible grimace, and
holding up one of his pudgy feet as if he were in great pain.

"Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn't know it was your foot, or you were
you--I thought it was only the hay on the floor."

"Ugh! Great goodness! Umm. If you ever have the gout, young woman, you
will understand how it feels to have anybody jump down full force upon
your toes. Ouch! O dear! O dear!"

Amy had never been accustomed to seeing people make ado over physical
suffering. She did not understand this man before her, and a thrill of
distress ran through her own frame, like the touch of an electric
battery.

"Oh, I am so sorry! I wouldn't have done it for anything if I had known.
Can't I do something now to help you? Let me rub it or--or--lead you.
You look--" In spite of her good intentions, the horrible contortions
by which Mr. Wingate's countenance expressed his feelings affected her
sense of the ridiculous, and she smiled. As instantly ashamed of the
smile, she buried her face in her hands, and waited what would come
next.

"Huh! Yes, you look sorry, of course you do, laughing at an old man
after you've nearly broken his foot in two. Hmm. You're a sorry lot, the
whole of you; yes, you are! O-oh!" Yet he, too, and in spite of himself,
laughed; but it was at his own pitiful joke about his kinsmen being a
"sorry lot."

Fortunately, Amy did not understand a jest of this nature, but she was
swift to see the brightening of his face. She put her hand on his arm,
and tried to draw his hand within her own.

"Maybe it won't be so bad. Lean on me, and I'll help you to a seat or to
the house. And thank you, thank you so much for putting Balaam in the