f it will make her as strong as ever. And the hundred
dollars a month you allow her besides her traveling expenses will be
plenty. You _are_ a good old thing, Dominie!"

"What you mean is that I'm an old good-thing. How shall I look," I
demanded bitterly, "when Mayme comes to thank me?"

"No foolisher than you do now, trying to raise unreasonable objections
to our perfectly good plans," retorted the Bonnie Lassie. "Besides, she
won't. She knows that your way is to do good by stealth and blush to
find it fame, and she's under pledge to pretend to know nothing
about it."

"Where did the Little Red Doctor raise it?" I queried.

"There are times, Dominie, when your mind has real penetrative power.
Think it over."

"The Weeping Scion of Wealth and Position!" I cried. "Did our medical
friend blackmail him?"

"Not necessarily. He only dropped a hint that Mayme's chance here was
rather poorer than a soldier's going to war, unless something could be
done and the Weeping Scion fairly begged to be allowed to do it. 'Do you
think she'd take it from you?' said the Little Red Doctor, 'after what
your mother called her?' 'Don't let her know,' says our ornamental young
weeper. 'Tell her somebody else is doing it. Tell her it's from that
white-whiskered old--from the elderly and handsome gentleman with the
benevolent expres--'"

"Yes: I know," I broke in. "Very good. I'm the goat. Lying, hypocrisy,
false pretense, fake charity; it's all one to a sin-seared old reprobate
like me. After it's over I'll go around the corner and steal what
pennies I can find in Blind Simon's cup, just to make me feel
comparatively respectable and decent again."

It was no easier than I expected it to be, especially when little Mayme,
having come to say good-bye, put her lips close to my ear and tried to
whisper something, and cried and kissed me instead.

Our Square was a dimmer and duller place after she left. But her letters
helped. They were so exactly like herself! Even at the first, when
things seemed to be going ill with her, they were all courage, and
quaint humor and determination to get well and come back to Our Square,
which was the dearest and best place in the world with the dearest and
best people in it. Homesickness! Poor little, lonely Mayme. She was
reading--she wrote the Bonnie Lassie--all the books that the Dominie had
listed for her, and she was being tutored by a school-teacher with blue
goggles and a weak heart who lived at th