't have every
chance to grow up good and happy. So I am writing the school you
mentioned, and sending them the money as you suggest.

"She will probably need some clothes, as they always look at a girl's
clothes so when she goes to school. I therefore enclose something for
that.

"Trusting that everything will turn out well, I am

"Yours sincerely,

"MARY SPENCER.

"P.S. I would like Rosa to write and tell me how she gets on at school."

She wrote the school next and when that was done she sat back in her
chair and looked out of the window at the birds and the flowers and the
bees that flew among the flowers.

"What a queer thing it is--love, or whatever they call it," she thought.
"The things it has done to people--right in this house! I guess it's like
fire--a good servant but a bad master--"

She thought of what it had done to Josiah--and to Josiah's son. She
thought of what it had done to Ma'm Maynard, what it was doing to Helen,
how it had left Aunt Cordelia and Aunt Patty untouched.

"It's like some sort of a fever," she told herself. "You never know
whether you're going to catch it or not--or when you're going to catch,
it--or what it's going to do to you--"

She walked to the window and rather unsteadily her hand arose to her
breast.

"I wonder if I shall ever catch it...." she thought. "I wonder what it
will do to me...!"

CHAPTER XXI

Archey Forbes came back in the beginning of May and the first call he
made was to the house on the hill. He had brought with him a collection
of souvenirs--a trench-made ring, shrapnel fragments of curious shapes,
the inevitable helmet and a sword handle with a piece of wire attached.

"It was part of our work once," he said, "to find booby traps and make
them harmless. This was in a barn, looking as though some one had tried
to hide his sword in the hay. It looked funny to me, so I went at it easy
and found the wire connected to a fuse. There was enough explosive to
blow up the barn and everybody around there, but it wouldn't blow up a
hill of bears when we got through with it."

He coloured a little through his bronze. "I thought you might like these
things," he awkwardly continued.

"Like them? I'd love them!" said Mary, her eyes sparkling.

"I brought them for you."

They were both silent for a time, looking at the souvenirs, but presently
their glances met and they smiled at each other.

"Of course you're going back to the factory," she said;