eward
offered and no questions asked. I've read them myself, but never did I
think."

"Oh, yes. I wanted you very badly," Phyllis assured her again. "I used
to tease Burbage when I was naughty, by telling her you were never cross
with me."

"And who is Burbage?" asked Mrs. Farquharson.

"She is my uncle's housekeeper. She was very good to me, too. But I
missed you dreadfully. You know, John, my mother and father were away
from home for weeks at a time, and Farquharson took such care of me."

"Such games as we had," said Mrs. Farquharson reflectively; and then to
John,--"She was everything whatever from Mary, Queen of Scots, to a
dromedary, I've beheaded her many's the time, and her humps was the
pillows off her little bed. If Genevieve hasn't burned those chops to a
cinder, they must be ready, and why ever she doesn't bring them up I do
not know."

What a dainty supper! John did full justice to it.

Mrs. Farquharson brooded over Phyllis; but she could eat nothing.

The kind-hearted woman maintained a constant stream of talk, in which
lodgers, rooms, chops, apricots, and toast, and the old times were
inextricably intermingled.

The first-floor front and his wife had seen better days; in stocks, they
were. The vagaries of Mr. Rowlandson, the bookseller, third-floor front,
the walls of his rooms lined with--what do you think? No, not with
books, nor pictures, but with glazed cases containing old patch-boxes
and old fans. Mrs. Farquharson had seen Mr. Singleton and Mr. Leonard
once. But the trio of painters was inseparable no longer. Mr. Knowles
had married their favorite model. "The hussy!" said Mrs. Farquharson.

One reminiscence followed another.

"Ah, me," she sighed. "Your father and mother was a pair of lovers if
ever there was a pair. As long as I knew them, they never had a
word--much less words. 'Pard' he called her. 'What shall we do to-day,
Pard?' he would ask her of a morning. She would want him to be at his
pictures 'On such a sunshiny morning!' he would say. And the next day,
maybe, it would rain. 'You know I can't paint these dark days,' says he.
And off they would go, on some harum-scarum or other, like a couple of
children. Like a couple of children--and so they ever were, too. Do you
mind my speaking of them?"

"I love it," Phyllis assured her. "I--you know I have had no one with
whom I could talk about my mother and father. Uncle Peter--" She could
not finish the sentence.

"Yes, yes, my d