self as much as possible. The
popular story of his smoking alone in the kitchen was more or less
true; only Michael as a rule sat with him, too weak-lunged for tobacco
himself, but reading stray scraps from the papers to the lonely old man,
and talking with him about the works, the while Jeremiah meditatively
sucked his clay pipe. One or two evenings in the week the twain spent up
in Celia's part of the house, listening with the awe of simple, honest
mechanics to the music she played for them.

Celia was to them something indefinably less, indescribably more, than
a daughter and sister. They could not think there had ever been anything
like her before in the world; the notion of criticising any deed or word
of hers would have appeared to them monstrous and unnatural.

She seemed to have come up to this radiant and wise and marvellously
talented womanhood of hers, to their minds, quite spontaneously. There
had been a little Celia--a red-headed, sulky, mutinous slip of a girl,
always at war with her step-mother, and affording no special comfort or
hope to the rest of the family. Then there was a long gap, during which
the father, four times a year, handed Michael a letter he had received
from the superioress of a distant convent, referring with cold formality
to the studies and discipline by which Miss Madden might profit more if
she had been better brought up, and enclosing a large bill. Then all at
once they beheld a big Celia, whom they spoke of as being home again,
but who really seemed never to have been there before--a tall, handsome,
confident young woman, swift of tongue and apprehension, appearing to
know everything there was to be known by the most learned, able to paint
pictures, carve wood, speak in divers languages, and make music for the
gods, yet with it all a very proud lady, one might say a queen.

The miracle of such a Celia as this impressed itself even upon the
step-mother. Mrs. Madden had looked forward with a certain grim
tightening of her combative jaws to the home-coming of the "red-head."
She felt herself much more the fine lady now than she had been when the
girl went away. She had her carriage now, and the magnificent new house
was nearly finished, and she had a greater number of ailments, and
spent far more money on doctor's bills, than any other lady in the
whole section. The flush of pride in her greatest achievement up to
date--having the most celebrated of New York physicians brought up to