a cot outdoors and have plenty of fresh eggs
and milk. He's coming to-morrow, with her, and his two children. The
girl will learn housekeeping from mother daytimes and the boy will go to
school. I have room for several others if I can find them, and I have
people in town hunting them up for me. See?"

"Oh!" said Rosemary. "How beautiful! How good you are!"

"Not good," said Alden, shamefacedly, digging at the soil with his heel.
"Merely decent--that's all." He took a spring cot out of the pile,
spread a blanket upon it, and invited Rosemary to sit down.

"It is beautiful," she insisted, "no matter what you say. How lovely it
must be to be able to do things for people--to give them what they
need! Oh," she breathed, "if I could only help!"

[Sidenote: The Gift and the Giver]

Alden looked at her keenly. "You can, Rosemary."

"How?"

"I don't know, but there's always a way, if one wants to help."

"I have nothing to give," she murmured. "I haven't anything of my own
but my mother's watch, and that won't go, so it wouldn't be of any use
to anybody."

"Someone said once," he continued, "that 'the gift without the giver is
bare.' That means that what you give doesn't count unless you also give
yourself."

"To give yourself,'" she repeated; then, all at once, her face
illumined. "I see now!" she cried. "I can give myself! They'll need
someone to take care of them, and I can do that. I can cook and scrub
floors and keep everything clean, and--but Grandmother won't let me,"
she concluded, sadly.

A paragraph from Edith's letter flashed vividly into his memory: "_The
door of the House of Life is open for you and for me, but it is closed
against her. It is in your power at least to set it ajar for her; to
admit her, too, into full fellowship, through striving and through
love._"

His heart yearned toward her unspeakably. They belonged to one another
in ways that Edith had no part in and never could have. Suddenly,
without looking at her, he said: "Rosemary, will you marry me?"

[Sidenote: What For?]

She turned to him, startled, then averted her face. Every vestige of
colour was gone, even from her lips. "Don't!" she said, brokenly. "Don't
make fun of me. I must go."

She rose to her feet, trembling, but he caught her hand and held her
back. "Look at me, dear. I'm not making fun of you. I mean it--every
word."

She sat down beside him, then, well out of reach of his outstretched
hand. "What for?" she asked,