ious influence over men?"

Instead of answering me, he merely ground his gears as though they had
been his own teeth. So I repeated my question.

"Why don't you ask that school-teacher of yours?" he demanded.

"But what," I inquired, "has Gershom got to do with it?"

He turned and inspected me with such a pointed stare that we nearly
ran into a Bain wagon full of bagged grain.

"You don't suppose I can't see that that beanpole's fallen in love
with you?" he rudely and raucously challenged.

"Why, I feel exactly like a mother to that poor boy," I innocently
protested.

"Mother nothing!" snorted my lord and master. "Any fool could see he's
going mushy on you!"

I pretended to be less surprised than I really was, but it gave me
considerable to think over. My husband was wrong, in a way, but no
woman feels bad at the thought that somebody is fond of her. It's nice
to know there's a heart or two at which one can still warm one's
outstretched hands. The short-cut to ruin, with a man, is the
knowledge that women are fond of him. But let a woman know that she is
not unloved and she walks the streets of Heaven, to say nothing of
nearly breaking her neck to make herself worthy of those transporting
affections.

But I soon had other things to think of, that afternoon, for Dinkie
and I had a little secret shopping to do. And in the midst of it I
caught the familiar tawny look which occasionally comes into my
man-child's eyes. It's the look of dreaming, the look of brooding
wildness where some unknown Celtic great-great-grandfather of a
great-great-grandfather stirs in his moorland grave like a collie-dog
in his afternoon sleep. And it all arose out of nothing more than a
blind beggar sitting on an upturned nail-keg at the edge of the
sidewalk and rather miraculously playing a mouth-organ and a guitar at
one and the same time. The guitar was a dog-eared old instrument that
had most decidedly seen better days, stained and bruised and
greasy-looking along the shank. The mouth-organ was held in position
by two wires that went about the beggar's neck, to leave his hands
free for strumming on the larger instrument. The music he made was
simple enough, rudimentary old waltz-tunes and plaintive old airs that
I hadn't heard for years. But I could see it go straight to the head
of my boy. His intent young face took on the fierce emptiness of a
Barres lion overlooking some time-worn desert. He forgot me, and he
forgot the shopping