f Devon and the smell of its pines,
of the good wholesome food provided by the family with whom she and
Irene were lodging, of long rambles through the woods, of bathing and
sleeping, and the joy of finding herself among trees had performed that
"yank" of which her fellow chorus lady had spoken.

Tootles was on her feet again. Her old zest to live had been given back
to her by the wonder and the beauty of sky and water and trees. A child
of nature, hitherto forced to struggle for her bread in cities, she was
revived and renewed and refreshed by the sweet breath and the warm
welcome of that simple corner of God's earth to which Irene had so
cunningly brought her. Her starved, city-ridden spirit had blossomed
and become healthy out there in the country like a root of Creeping
Jenny taken from a pot on the window-sill of a slum house and put back
into good brown earth.

The rough and ready family with whom they were lodging kept a duck
farm, and it was to this white army of restless, greedy things that
Tootles owed her first laugh. Tired and smut-bespattered after a
tedious railway journey she had eagerly and with childish joy gone at
once to see them fed, the old and knowing, the young and optimistic,
and all the yellow babies with uncertain feet and tiny noises. After
that, a setting sun which set fire to the sky and water and trees,
melting and mingling them together, and Tootles turned the corner. The
motherless waif slept that night on Nature's maternal breast and was
comforted.

The warm-hearted Irene was proud of herself. Devon--Heaven--it was
indeed an inspiration. The only fly in her amber came from the fact
that Martin was away. But when she discovered that he and his friend
had merely gone for a short trip on the yawl she waited with great
content for their return, setting the seeds in Tootles' mind, with
infinite diplomacy and feminine cunning, of a determination to use all
her wiles to win even a little bit of love from Martin as soon as she
saw him again.

Playing the part of one who had unexpectedly benefited from the will of
an almost-forgotten relative she never, of course, said a word of why
she had chosen Devon for this gorgeous holiday. Temporarily wealthy it
was not necessary to look cannily at every nickel. Before leaving New
York she had bought herself and Tootles some very necessary clothes and
saw to it that they lived on as much of the fat of the land as could be
obtained in the honest and hu