"Oh, I'm so glad to be here," Jack had begun, "and it was so good of you
to want me," when a voice rang clear from the top of the stairs:

"And where's daddy--isn't he coming?"

"Oh!--how do you do, Miss Ruth? No; I am sorry to say he could not
leave--that is, we could not persuade him to leave. He sent you all
manner of messages, and you, too, Miss--"

"He isn't coming? Oh, I am so disappointed! What is the matter, is he
ill?" She was half-way down the staircase now, her face showing how keen
was her disappointment.

"No--nothing's the matter--only we are arranging for an important blast
in a day or two, and he felt he couldn't be away. I can only stay the
night." Jack had his overcoat stripped from his broad shoulders now and
the two had reached each other's hands.

Miss Felicia watched them narrowly out of her sharp, kindly eyes. This
love-affair--if it were a love-affair--had been going on for years now
and she was still in the dark as to the outcome. There was no question
that the boy was head over heels in love with the girl--she could see
that from the way the color mounted to his cheeks when Ruth's voice rang
out, and the joy in his eyes when they looked into hers. How Ruth felt
toward her new guest was what she wanted to know. This was, perhaps, the
only reason why she had invited him--another thing she kept strictly to
herself.

But the two understood it--if Miss Felicia did not. There may be shrewd
old ladies who can read minds at a glance, and fussy old men who can see
through blind millstones, and who know it all, but give me two lovers to
fool them both to the top of their bent, be they so minded.

"And now, dear, let Mr. Breen go to his room, for we dine in an hour,
and Holker will be cross as two sticks if we keep it waiting a minute."

But Holker was not cross--not when dinner was served; nobody was
cross--certainly not Peter, who was in his gayest mood; and certainly
not Ruth or Jack, who babbled away next to each other. Peter's heart
swelled with pride and satisfaction as he saw the change which two years
of hard work had made in Jack--not only in his bearing and in a certain
fearless independence which had become a part of his personality, but in
the unmistakable note of joyousness which flowed out of him, so marked
in contrast to the depression which used to haunt him like a spectre.
Stories of his life at his boarding-house--vaguely christened a hotel by
its landlady, Mrs. Hicks--bubble