of her calico dress under the pressure of superabundant flesh.
Besides, she had tried to scrub his favorite violin with sapolio. No,
anything was better than Mrs. Buck as a constancy.

He took off his hat unconsciously as he entered Lyddy's sitting-room.
A gentle breeze blew one of the full red curtains towards him till it
fluttered about his shoulders like a frolicsome, teasing hand. There was
a sweet, pungent odor of pine boughs, a canary sang in the window, the
clock was trimmed with a blackberry vine; he knew the prickles, and
they called up to his mind the glowing tints he had loved so well. His
sensitive hand, that carried a divining rod in every finger-tip, met a
vase on the shelf, and, traveling upward, touched a full branch of alder
berries tied about with a ribbon. The ribbon would be red; the woman
who arranged this room would make no mistake; for in one morning Anthony
Croft had penetrated the secret of Lyddy's true personality, and in a
measure had sounded the shallows that led to the depths of her nature.

Lyddy went home at seven o'clock that night rather reluctantly. The
doctor had said Mr. Croft could sit up with the boy unless he grew much
worse, and there was no propriety in her staying longer unless there was
danger.

"You have been very good to me," Anthony said gravely, as he shook her
hand at parting,--"very good."

They stood together on the doorstep. A distant bell, called to evening
prayer-meeting; the restless murmur of the river and the whisper of
the wind in the pines broke the twilight stillness. The long, quiet day
together, part of it spent by the sick child's bedside, had brought the
two strangers curiously near to each other.

"The house hasn't seemed so sweet and fresh since my mother died," he
went on, as he dropped her hand, "and I haven't had so many flowers and
green things in it since I lost my eyesight."

"Was it long ago?"

"Ten years. Is that long?"

"Long to bear a burden."

"I hope you know little of burden-bearing?"

"I know little else."

"I might have guessed it from the alacrity with which you took up
Davy's and mine. You must be very happy to have the power to make
things straight and sunny and wholesome; to breathe your strength into
helplessness such as mine. I thank you, and I envy you. Good-night."

Lyddy turned on her heel without a word; her mind was beyond and above
words. The sky seemed to have descended upon, enveloped her, caught her
up into its