ion of Lois. For a minute it bloomed in a vivid
blush, for their eyes met as she, too, by stealth was observing him for
his great height and breadth and alien complexion.

When afterwards his mother said, 'You know whose child she is?' he
answered, 'Yes.'

'Christian, I thank God for my good man.'

Her sense he could not adjust till long afterwards, when a fuller account
of Rhoda's past was given to him. Now Giles told but little.

'No, she had never set eyes on her before. I? Oh yes, I had--the pretty
little piece! But when I bring her in, and have said no more than one
cough, the wife goes clean past me, and has the girl in her arms, and
calls her by her sister's name, and sobs hard and dry like a man. It
turned me silly and rotten, it did. I knew for a minute she didn't fairly
know it was not somehow her sister; no older than Rhoda she was, poor
thing, when she last stood under our roof; and their last parting had not
been over tender. Well, I had messed the business--I knew I should,--for
there was the wife going on, saying things, and there was Rhoda getting
scared and white, and putting out a hand to me. And then I go one worse,
for I get hold of her, and say, "She takes you for your mother, child,"
that the wife may get the hang of it; and at that down she sits sudden,
all of a shake. But the poor wench says, "My _mother_!" for--well, I
suppose I had lied sometime--she thought she was the truly begotten
orphan of an estranged brother. Nothing would come handy but the
truth--the wife being there; so I even told it all. Yes, I did, though it
did seem cruel hard for a young wench to have that story from a beard.
But it worked well; for when the poor child knew not how to bestow her
eyes, nor to bear the red of shame, up stands the wife to her, just woman
by woman, and looks fierce at me, and to her Rhoda closes all a-quiver,
and in a moment the wife has kissed her, blight and all, and Rhoda is
crying enough for both. That was over an hour before you came in on us,
when out jumped "cousin" and "niece" to clinch the business. I knew she
would never go back on them. To think that all these years--well--well.'

'Well, Dad--all these years?' said Christian, incited by Lois's words to
be curious of Giles's conduct; for he was a comrade of easy imperfection,
not insistent of the highest rectitudes, nor often a consistent exemplar
of Lois's strict precepts. Giles drew in.

'A grape has grown from a thorn, that's all,'