ppily even if it came true."

Perhaps those tired eyes of hers had seen more than one would have
imagined; perhaps she guessed the trend of her daughter's thoughts.

Faith went on with her tea, but above the noise and chatter of the twins
she seemed to hear the soft purr of the wonderful car that had brought
her home, and the voice of its owner who had called himself "the Beggar
Man."

He was not very young, he was not very good-looking, but his voice and
his eyes had been kind, and he had given Faith her first glimpse of the
romance for which her youth had been unconsciously hungering.

CHAPTER II

When she met Peg in the morning Faith told her what had happened.

Peg listened sceptically; she seemed more impressed with Faith's
fainting than with its sequence. "I said you ought to give up and have a
holiday," she said bluntly.

Faith was vaguely disappointed. She had been so sure that Peg would see
the romance of her adventure. She worked badly that day; her fingers
seemed all thumbs.

Twice the forewoman spoke to her sharply, and once Peg said with a faint
smile: "You're thinking about that car, aren't you, Faith?"

The girl flushed sensitively, with quick denial.

"Of course not." But she knew that she was.

She looked at herself anxiously in a tiny glass before she started home.
For the first time she realized how pale and thin she was, and how poor
her clothes. Her heart swelled with a sense of the injustice of life as
she trudged along the hot streets.

To-day there was no Beggar Man, no wonderful car gliding up to the kerb
to pick her up and carry her the weary way home; such a thing could not
happen a second time.

"But it was only a story, Faith...." That was what her mother had said,
so perhaps everything wonderful in life was just a story, too--never
coming true!

She quickened her steps with a feeling of shame. The day of miracles had
passed; fairy princes did not go about the East End of London disguised
as big, burly men with kind eyes.

Faith turned a corner sharply and came face to face with "the Beggar
Man."...

He pulled up short with a conventional apology, then all at once he
smiled.

"I was thinking of you a moment ago. It was just here that we met
yesterday, wasn't it?"

"Yes." Faith had flushed like a rose. "I was just thinking of you, too,"
she said, with courage born of her delight.

He looked at her. "Have you had your tea?" he asked in his abrupt
manner.

"N