ke what
songs we can."

"I think, Father, that a song should be in poetry, shouldn't it?"

[Sidenote: The Real Song]

"Some of them are, but more are not. Some are music and some are words,
and some, like prayers, are feeling. The real song is in the thrush's
heart, not in the silvery rain of sound that comes from the green boughs
in Spring. When you open the door of your heart and let all the joy rush
out, laughing--then you are making a song."

"But--is there always joy?"

"Yes, though sometimes it is sadly covered up with other things. We must
find it and divide it, for only in that way it grows. Good-night, my
dear."

He bent to kiss her, while Miriam, with her heart full of nameless
yearning, watched them from the far shadows. The sound of his footsteps
died away and a distant door closed. Soon afterward Miriam took her
candle and went noiselessly upstairs, but she did not say good-night to
Barbara.

[Sidenote: Midnight]

Until midnight, the girl sat at her sewing, taking the finest of
stitches in tuck and hem. The lamp burning low made her needle fly
swiftly. In her own room was an old chest nearly full of dainty garments
which she was never to wear. She had wrought miracles of embroidery upon
some of them, and others were unadorned save by tucks and lace.

When the work was finished, she folded it and laid it aside, then put
away her thimble and thread. "When the guests come to the hotel," she
thought--"ah, when they come, and buy all the things I've made the past
year, and the preserves and the candied orange peel, the rag rugs and
the quilts, then----"

[Sidenote: Dying Embers]

So Barbara fell a-dreaming, and the light of the dying embers lay
lovingly upon her face, already transfigured by tenderness into beauty
beyond words. The lamp went out and little by little the room faded into
twilight, then into night. It was quite dark when she leaned over and
picked up her crutches.

"Dear, dear father," she breathed. "He must never know!"

II

Miss Mattie

Miss Mattie was getting supper, sustained by the comforting thought that
her task was utterly beneath her and had been forced upon her by the
mysterious workings of an untoward Fate. She was not really "Miss,"
since she had been married and widowed, and a grown son was waiting
impatiently in the sitting-room for his evening meal, but her
neighbours, nearly all of whom had known her before her marriage, still
called her "Miss Mattie."