efore it, the
_interne's_ wrath gave way to impotency.

"Cold beer!" said the parrot wickedly.

IV

The Avenue Girl improved slowly. Morning and evening came the Dummy
and smiled down at her, with reverence in his eyes. She could smile
back now and sometimes she spoke to him. There was a change in the
Avenue Girl. She was less sullen. In the back of her eyes each
morning found a glow of hope--that died, it is true, by noontime;
but it came again with the new day.

"How's Polly this morning, Montmorency?" she would say, and give him
a bit of toast from her breakfast for the bird. Or: "I wish you
could talk, Reginald. I'd like to hear what Rose said when you took
the parrot. It must have been a scream!"

He brought her the first chrysanthemums of the fall and laid them on
her pillow. It was after he had gone, while the Probationer was
combing out the soft short curls of her hair, that she mentioned the
Dummy. She strove to make her voice steady, but there were tears in
her eyes.

"The old goat's been pretty good to me, hasn't he?" she said.

"I believe it is very unusual. I wonder"--the Probationer poised the
comb--"perhaps you remind him of some one he used to know."

They knew nothing, of course, of the boy John and the window.

"He's about the first decent man I ever knew," said the Avenue
Girl--"and he's a fool!"

"Either a fool or very, very wise," replied the Probationer.

The _interne_ and the Probationer were good friends again, but they
had never quite got back to the place they had lost on the roof.
Over the Avenue Girl's dressing their eyes met sometimes, and there
was an appeal in the man's and tenderness; but there was pride too.
He would not say he had not meant it. Any man will tell you that he
was entirely right, and that she had been most unwise and needed a
good scolding--only, of course, it is never the wise people who make
life worth the living.

And an important thing had happened--the Probationer had been
accepted and had got her cap. She looked very stately in it, though
it generally had a dent somewhere from her forgetting she had it on
and putting her hat on over it. The first day she wore it she knelt
at prayers with the others, and said a little Thank You! for getting
through when she was so unworthy. She asked to be made clean and
pure, and delivered from vanity, and of some use in the world. And,
trying to think of the things she had been remiss in, she went out
that night i