the reparation is made. The father
hurt, and the daughter cured."

Barbara's face had become very grave. "However wrong you are about my
character," she said, "the reparation is not yet made. And you may be
sure of this--that, whatever the criticism, I owe you friendship and
you shall have it,"

The beggar trembled inwardly, but he shook his head. "You could hardly
pull me up to a level," he said, "upon which friendship between us would
be possible. Imagine that I have sunk to the chin in mud, and that at
the last time of calling I have been pulled out. Still the mud clings
to me."

"Nonsense," said Barbara, "you can be washed."

They both laughed, and at once became grave again.

"You don't know," he said, "what I've been or what I've done. You can't
even imagine."

"That is not the point," said Barbara, "and this is: Are you sorry? If
you really have been rotten, do you want to be sound and fine? If you do
I'm your friend, and whatever help I can give you, you shall have."

"If you knew," he said humbly, "how I dread the bust being finished!
I'll be like a child stealing a ride by the strength of his arms, I'll
have to drop off then--won't I?--back into the mud."

"I'm not offering you friendship," she said, "merely while you are
useful to me. Do well, Mr. Blizzard, and do good, and I will always be
your friend."

"Do you believe that I want to do well, that I want to do good? That I
want to wipe the past from the slate?"

"You have only to tell me," she said loyally, "and I shall believe."

"Then I tell you," he said, and Barbara jumped impulsively to her feet
and shook hands with him.

"And I may come to you," he pleaded, "for advice, and help? Old habits
are hard to shake. My friends are thieves, crooks, and grafters. My
sources of income are not clean. Even now I have dishonest irons in the
fire. Shall I pull them out?"

"Of course."

"But people who have trusted me will be hurt."

"You must work those problems out in your own conscience."

To Blizzard, believing that he was actually making progress into the
fastnesses of her heart, and that he might in time gain his ends by
propinquity and his own undeniable force and personality, a sudden,
cheeky knocking upon the door proved intensely irritating. It was a very
small messenger-boy with a box of jonquils. Blizzard watched very
closely the expression of Barbara's face while she opened the box. She
held up the flowers for him to see.

"Aren't