e a fairy princess, lips like cherries, and the
nicest clothes, but you could tell she wasn't thinkin' about them. I
just wanted her to stay and talk to me. 'Will you give this to him,'
she said to me, 'I'll wait here, and if he doesn't want to see me--it
is all right--I will go away--but I think he will want to see me,'
says she, with a smile at me that made me want him to see her too, and
she sat down on one of the veranda chairs.

"When I gave him the card, he read it out loud--ain't he the nicest
ever? Lots of people wouldn't have read it out. 'Miss Pearl Watson,'
says he, and what's this, 'teacher at Purple Springs,' and he nearly
jumped out of his chair.

"'My God!' he says, and he reached for his cane, like as if he was
going somewhere. 'Bring her here,' he said, and his voice was more
natural than it has been since--it made me all prickle," said Rosie.

When Pearl was taken around to the back garden, Rosie retired to a
point of vantage on the sleeping-porch above, and got most of the
conversation, by abandoning all scrubbing operations, and sitting very
still.

The ex-Premier's wife arose as if to leave, but he motioned her to
stay.

"This concerns you too, Jessie," he said.

For a moment a silence fell on them, as the wind gently stirred the
lilacs in front of them and a humming bird on silken wings went
flashing past, like a flower that had come alive.

"You are a teacher, your card says, at Purple Springs. Is that in the
far North?" The ex-Premier endeavored to speak calmly.

"No," said Pearl, "it is only a hundred miles from here."

His face clouded with disappointment.

"But it was named for the valley in the far North, by a woman who came
from there."

"Where is the woman now," he asked, with a fine attempt to make his
question casual.

"I came to tell you about her," said Pearl, with evasion. "That is, of
course, if you would like to hear. It is an interesting story."

He motioned to her to begin, trembling with excitement.

Pearl told the story that had been told to her the night she and Annie
Gray had sat by the dying fire, told it, with many a touch of pathos
and realism, which made it live before him. His eyes never left her
face, though he could not discover how much she knew, and yet the very
fact of her coming to him seemed to prove that she knew everything.

The old man's face twitched painfully when she spoke of the young
widow's quarrel with her husband's father.

"He was no