ey were walled in, too, by the
nothingness all around them."

Then the most unexpected of all things happened. Ann smiled. "Katie, I'd
like to have seen you in that town!"

"I'm afraid," said Katie, "that I would have invented a new kind of peg."

The smile seemed to have done Ann good. She sat down, grew more natural.

"When I try to tell about my life in that town I suppose it sounds as
though I were making a terrible fuss about things. When you think of
children that haven't any homes-that are beaten by drunken
fathers--starved--overworked-but it was the nothingness. If my father
only had got drunk!"

Katie smiled understandingly.

"Katie, you've a lot of imagination. Just try to think what it would mean
never to have what you could really call fun!"

Katie took a sweep back over her own life--full to the brim of fun. Her
imagination did not go far enough to get a real picture of life with the
fun left out.

"Oh, of course," said Ann, "there were pleasures! My father and the
people of his church were like Miss Osborne--they believed it was one of
the underlying principles of life--only they would call it 'God's
will'--that all must have pleasure. But such God-fearing pleasure! I
think I could have stood it if it hadn't been for the pleasures."

"Pleasures with the fun left out," suggested Kate.

"Yes, though fun isn't the word, for I don't mean just good times. I
mean--I mean--"

"You mean the joy of living," said Katie. "You mean the loveliness of
life."

"Yes; now your kind of religion--the kind of religion your kind of people
have, doesn't seem to hurt them any."

Katie laughed oddly. "True; it doesn't hurt us much."

"My father's kind is something so different. The love of God seems to
have dried him up. He's not a human being. He's a Christian."

Katie thought of her uncle--a bishop, and all too human a human being.
She was about to protest, then considered that she had never known the
kind of Christian--or human being--Ann was talking about.

"Everything at our church squeaked. The windows. The organ. The deacon's
shoes. My father's voice. The religion squeaked. Life squeaked.

"I'll tell you a story, Katie, that maybe will make you see how it was.
It's about a dog, and it's easy for you to understand things about dogs.

"Some one gave him to me. I suppose he was not a fine dog--not
full-blooded. But that didn't matter. _You_ know that we don't love dogs
for their blood. We love them for t