judicially on her bright face; it was a good face to look
upon. Perhaps his eyes said as much.

"Nineteen," he hazarded.

"Oh, more than that."

"Twenty-one?"

"Oh, less than that." And their first confidence was established.

"Twenty," thought Dave to himself. "Reenie must be about twenty now."

"And I was five when--when Jack died," she went on. "Jack was my
brother, you know. He was seven, and a great boy for his daddy. Most
boys run to their mother with their hurts, but Jack was different.
When father was at the office Jack would save up his little hurts until
evening. . . Well, we were playing, and I stood on the car tracks,
signalling the motorman, to make him ring his bell. On came the car,
with the bell clanging, and the man in blue looking very cross. Jack
must have thought I was waiting too long, for he suddenly rushed on the
track to pull me off." She stopped, and sat looking at the rushing
water.

"I heard him cry, 'Oh Daddy, Daddy,' above the screech of the brakes,"
she continued, in a dry voice.

"Sorrow is a strange thing," she went on, after a pause. "I don't
pretend to understand, but it seems to have its place in life. I fancy
this would soon be a pretty degenerate world if there were no sorrow in
it. I have been told that sometimes fruit trees refuse to bear until
they have met with adversity. Then the gardener bores a hole in them,
or something like that, and, behold, next season they bear. Sounds
silly, but they say it's a fact. I guess it's natural law. Well--"
She paused again, and when she spoke it was in a lower, more
confidential note.

"I shouldn't tell you this, Dave. I shouldn't know it myself. But
before that things hadn't been, well, just as good as they might in our
home. . . They've been different since."

The shock of her words brought him upright. To him it seemed that Mr.
and Mrs. Duncan were the ideal father and mother. It was impossible to
associate them with a home where things "hadn't been just as good as
they might." But her half confession left no room for remark.

"Mother told me," she went on, after a long silence, and without
looking at him. "A few years ago, 'If some one had only told me, when
I was your age,' she said."

"Why do you tell me this?" he suddenly demanded.

"Did you ever feel that you just had to tell _someone_?"

It was his turn to pause. "Yes," he confessed, at length.

"Then tell me."

So he led her down through