an one
horse?"

"How shocked he would be could he see how I handle four," she said.

Should we never get out of the shadow of costly things, out of the
clutch of changed ideas? For a moment I had a picture of Penelope on
the box of a coach, ribbons and whip in hand, with four smart cobs
stepping to the music of jingling harness, with bandy-legged grooms on
the boot, and beside her some perfectly tailored creature in a
glistening top-hat. It was a gallant picture, and one in which there
was no part for me. Metaphorically I hurled at it a missile of the
common clay of which, after all, we were both made. Surely fishing was
a subject on which her ideas could not change.

"Do you remember the great expeditions we used to have along the
creek?" I said.

"Remember them? Why, David, I never could forget such days as those."
She leaned forward, with her hands clasped in her lap, as though to
bring herself into closer touch with the kindred spirit on the divan.
"I often laugh over the time I caught the big turtle on my hook. You
remember--we were on the bridge at the end of the meadow, and I thought
I had captured a whale, and when I saw it I was so astonished that I
went head-first into the water."

"And I dived after you," I cried excitedly, "into two feet of water and
three feet of mud."

"And we both ran home soaking wet and covered with green slime," she
went on rapidly. "Will you ever forget her look when mother----"

"Mother?" There was in my exclamation a note of surprise in which was
almost lost the delight I felt in her use of that word.

She caught the surprise alone, and spoke now as though offended at what
she thought my protest. "Yes, mother. Why, David, don't you remember
I always called her mother? And she was the only mother I ever
knew--even if only for a brief summer."

"I was glad, Penelope," I said. "Yet you surprised me just a little,
because I feared that so much had come into your life you might have
forgotten----"

"Forgotten?" she returned with a gesture of impatience. "You do not
grant me much heart if you think I could ever forget those who took me
in when I was homeless, the mother who tucked me into bed every night,
who taught me the first prayer I ever uttered." She paused for a
moment, and sat with her eyes fixed on her clasped hands. I, too, was
silent. Suddenly she looked up. "You are right, David; I had
forgotten. I was ungrateful, too; but seeing you again and ta