d weep, Mr.
Donald. God will reward you, sir. I can't begin to thank you."

"I'm glad of that. By the way, who is towing the garbage-barge to sea
nowadays?"

"I don't know, sir. Mr. Daney hired somebody else and his boat when I
had to quit because of my sciatica."

"Hereafter, we'll use your boat, Caleb, and engage a man to operate
it. The rental will be ten dollars per trip, two trips a week, eighty
dollars a month. Cheap enough; so don't think it's charity. Here's the
first month's rental in advance. I'm going to run along now, Caleb,
but I'll look in from time to time, and if you should need me in the
interim, send for me."

He kissed little Don Brent, who set up a prodigious shriek at the
prospect of desertion and brought his mother fluttering into the room.
He watched her soothe the youngster and then asked:

"Nan, where do you keep the arnica now? I cut my knuckles on that
yellow rascal."

She raised a sadly smiling face to his.

"Where would the arnica be--if we had any, Donald?" she demanded.

"Where it used to be, I suppose. Up on that shelf, inside the basement
of that funny old half-portion grandfather's clock and just out of
reach of the pendulum."

"You do remember, don't you? But it's all gone so many years ago,
Donald. We haven't had a boy around to visit us since you left Port
Agnew, you know. I'll put some tincture of iodine on your knuckles,
however."

"Do, please, Nan."

A little later, he said:

"Do you remember, Nan, the day I stuck my finger into the cage of old
Mrs. Biddle's South American parrot to coddle the brute and he all but
chewed it off?"

She nodded.

"And you came straight here to have it attended to, instead of going
to a doctor."

"You wept when you saw my mangled digit. Remember, Nan? Strange how
that scene persists in my memory! You were so sweetly sympathetic I
was quite ashamed of myself."

"That's because you always were the sweetest boy in the world and I
was only the garbage-man's daughter," she whispered. "There's a
ridiculous song about the garbage-man's daughter. I heard it once, in
vaudeville--in San Francisco."

"If I come over some evening soon, will you sing for me, Nan?"

"I never sing any more, Don."

"Nobody but you can ever sing 'Carry Me Back to Old Virginy' for me."

"Then I shall sing it, Don."

"Thank you, Nan."

She completed the anointing of his battle-scarred knuckles with
iodine, and, for a moment, she held his hand, examining c