's
for you to play on, sometimes, in the evenings, sitting on the
window-seat with me, or out on the veranda if you'd rather. But
wherever you sit to play it, I may stay quite close to you, mayn't I?"

She was tired and overstrained. That was probably why she put both
arms around the banjo as if it was somebody that loved her, and cried
on it very much as if it were a baby. And when she went back to her
room to replace things as she had found them she carried it with her.

She was calmer after that, for some reason. She had the illogical
feeling that some one had been kind to her. She put her things away in
the drawers, and even had the courage to lay out for herself the
all-enveloping gingham apron, much shortened, which Mrs. O'Mara had
loaned her till she and Peggy could run up some more. She supposed
Francis would want her to start in with the cooking that night. So she
put on her plainest dress and easiest shoes, and then, there being
nothing else to do, took the banjo out into the sitting-room and began
to string it. And as she strung she thought.

She was going to have to be pretty close to Francis till her term of
service was up; she might as well not fight him. It would make things
easier all round if she didn't, as long as she had to keep on friendly
terms before people.

The truth was, that she couldn't but feel softened to the man who had
written that boyish, loving note. "Even if it wasn't to the her he
knew now, it was to the Marjorie of last year, and she was a near
relation," thought the Marjorie of this year whimsically.

So when Francis came back with the rest of her baggage he found her on
the window-seat with the banjo in her lap, fingering it softly, and
smiling at him. She could see that he was a little startled, but he
had himself in hand directly, and came forward, saying, "So you found
the banjo. I got it for you in the first place. Is it any good?"

"Oh, did you?" inquired his wife innocently. "Yes, it's a very good
banjo. Maybe I'll find time to play it some day when the housework for
the men is out of the way. What do I do when I begin? And hadn't we
better go over now?"

"I didn't expect you to start till to-morrow," he explained. "I've
taken one of the men off his regular work to attend to it till then."

"Oh, that's kind of you," she answered, still friendly and smiling to a
degree that seemed to perplex him. "But perhaps you could take me over
to-night and show