to the winds of heaven all the gracious elements that make a
home. Only a week; and in the first days of June, Edgar went back to
Santa Barbara for the summer holidays without even a sight of his
brave, helpful girl-comrade.

He went back to his brother's congratulations, his sister's kisses, his
mother's happy tears, and his father's hearty hand-clasp, full of
renewed pride and belief in his eldest son. But there was a shadow on
the lad's high spirits as he thought of gay, courageous, daring Polly,
stripped in a moment of all that made life dear.

"I wish we could do something for her, poor little soul," he said to
his mother in one of their long talks in the orange-tree sitting-room.
"Tongue cannot tell what Mrs. Oliver has been to me, and I 'm not a bit
ashamed to own up to Polly's influence, even if she is a girl and two
or three years younger than I am. Hang it! I 'd like to see the
fellow that could live under the same roof as those two women, and not
do the best that was in him! Has n't Polly some relatives in the East?"

"No near ones, and none that she has ever seen. Still, she is not
absolutely alone, as many girls would be under like circumstances. We
would be only too glad to have her here; the Howards have telegraphed
asking her to spend the winter with them in Cambridge; I am confident
Dr. Winship will do the same when the news of Mrs. Oliver's death
reaches Europe; and Mrs. Bird seems to have constituted herself a sort
of fairy Godmother in chief. You see everybody loves Polly; and she
will probably have no less than four homes open to her. The fact is,
if you should put Polly on a desert island, the bees and the
butterflies and the birds would gather about her; she draws everything
and everybody to her magically. Then, too, she is not penniless.
Rents are low, and she cannot hope to get quite as much for the house
as before, but even counting repairs, taxes, and furnishings, we think
she is reasonably certain of fifty dollars a month."

"She will never be idle, unless this sorrow makes a great change in
her. Polly seems to have been created to 'become' by 'doing.'"

"Yet she does not in the least relish work, Edgar. I never knew a girl
with a greater appetite for luxury. One cannot always see the deepest
reasons in God's providence as applied to one's own life and character;
but it is often easy to understand them as one looks at other people
and notes their growth and development. For