ad been in any wise responsible for her mother's tragedy. Fred
had risen and stood before the fire with his arms folded. The care he
took to make himself presentable, expressed in his carefully brushed
clothes; the polish on his rough shoes; his clean-shaven face, touched
her now as at other times. She wondered whether, if they had been alone,
she would not have confessed her perplexities and asked his counsel. In
their talks she had been impressed by his rugged common sense, and her
plight was one that demanded the exercise of just that quality. Rose
turned the pages of her book. Her father and Nan continued their
conference in low tones in the adjoining room.

"You promise--don't you--that you won't ever do foolish things like that
any more," and Fred put out his hand half in farewell, half as though
the clasp he invited would mean a pledge.

"Please forget it. I'll probably never have another chance. That was the
kind of thing you do only once; there wouldn't be any fun in doing it
over again."

"Your father has been mighty nice to me: I wanted to tell him I
appreciated it. I felt I'd like to say that to him on Christmas--just a
kind of sentimental feeling about it. But you please say it for me.
He'll understand; I couldn't say it before the others."

She responded passively: there were a good many things that she must say
to her father!

Kirkwood and Nan reappeared as they heard Fred saying good-bye to Rose.

Nan said she and her sister must be going, too, as they had some calls
to make. At the door Nan kissed Phil, and asked her to come to see her
the next day. The kiss and this special invitation, half-whispered,
confirmed Phil's belief that her father and Nan would have told her of
their engagement if Fred's coming had not interfered. She was glad for
the delay, and yet it would have been easier in many ways to have met
the issue squarely before Nan and Rose. She and her father watched Fred
and the women pass from sight toward town.

"He seems to be a nice fellow," remarked Kirkwood, as they returned to
the living-room--"a clean, manly sort of chap."

"He's all that," replied Phil. "He came to thank you for something: he's
too shy to talk much in company and he asked me to tell you how much he
appreciated something or other you had done for him."

"Queer chap, for a Holton," Kirkwood observed, striking a match on the
underside of the slate mantel-shelf. "There's a real nobility in that
boy. He didn't te