ed?"

The man turned with a sharp movement, and looked at her. "Why I--I don't
know that I ever was. Not seriously, you know."

"Well, _I_ have been."

Joyce pushed up the sleeve of her jacket and drew down her glove with a
quick motion, full of repressed intensity. He had just a glimpse of a
red scar on the white flesh when, with as sudden a motion and a rosy
flush, she dropped her arm and let the sleeve fall over her wrist, then
added more gently,

"One knows how it hurts when one has suffered oneself. I was only eight
years old, but I have never forgotten the day I tripped and fell against
a red-hot stove--and I had the tenderest and most constant care, too."

Had Joyce been looking at her companion's face she would no doubt have
been made furious by its expression. If ever a laugh struggled in a
man's eyes, trying to break bounds, it struggled now in George Dalton's
gray orbs! After an instant, which Joyce fondly imagined was given to
silent sympathy, he said gently,

"Burns are serious things, I know. Miss Lavillotte, I began stroking for
the furnaces here when I was eight years old. I think"--looking off in
an impersonal manner, as if reckoning a problem,--"that from that time
on to fourteen, at least, I was never without burns on face, hands or
arms. Probably I grew used to them."

Joyce looked up quickly. He was quite serious now, and seemed almost to
have forgotten the subject up between them. Joyce felt suddenly very
young, and she devoutly wished she had never consented to this
detestable visit with her manager. Then pride came to her aid, and she
asked deliberately, with an intrepid air,

"I doubt if people ever really get used to pain. Do you think the doctor
will be through with that boy in half an hour?"

"Possibly. Of course I don't know the extent of his injuries."

"Let us hurry then," doubling her pace. "I shall have none too much time
before the 2.39 train, and we must take that, as I have an engagement in
the city. Ellen, am I tiring you?"

The maid smiled grimly. She understood this as an overture for peace,
knowing her young mistress was never so thoughtful and conciliatory as
just after being most unreasonable and peremptory. She rightly
conjectured that the girl was already ashamed of her sharpness, and
wished to make amends in some way. Mr. Dalton's slower comprehension of
womankind was bewildered by these rapid changes. Having inwardly
decided, in spite of Ellen's favorable testim