l." But I wasn't meant for a poet any
more than Miss Katherine for an old maid.

Dr. Parke Alden must be dead. Either that or he's no gentleman, or he
didn't get my letter. I wish I hadn't written it. I wish I hadn't let
him know I was living. But it was Miss Katherine I was thinking about.
Thank Heaven, I didn't mention her name! He isn't worth thinking about,
and I think of nothing else.

XIII

HIS COMING

If I could get out on the roof and shake hands with the stars, or dance
with the man in the moon, I might be able to write it down; but
everything in me is bubbling and singing so, I can't keep still to
write. But I'm bound to put down that he's come. He's come!

He came day before yesterday morning about ten o'clock. I was in the
school-room, and Mrs. Blamire opened the door and looked in. "Mary Cary
can go to the parlor," she said. "Some one wishes to see her."

I got up and went out, not dreaming who it was, as I was only looking
for a letter; and there, standing by a window with his back to me, was a
man, and in a minute I knew.

I couldn't move, and I couldn't speak, and Lot's wife wasn't any stiller
than I was.

But he heard me come in, and turned, and, oh! it is so strange how
right at once you know some things. And the thing I knew was it was all
true. That he'd never known about me until he got my letter. For a
minute he just looked at me. We didn't either of us say a word, and then
he came toward me and held out his hands.

"Mary Cary," he said. And the first thing I knew I was crying fit to
break my heart, with my arms around his neck, and he holding me tight in
his. His eyes were wet, too. They were. I saw them. He kissed me about
fifty times--though maybe not more than twenty--and I had such a strange
feeling I didn't know whether I was in my body or not. It was the first
time that any one who was really truly my own had ever come to see me
since I'd been an Orphan, and every bit of sense I ever had rolled away
like the Red Sea waters. Rolled right away.

I don't remember what happened next. Everything is a jumble of so many
kinds of joys that I've been crazy all day. But I wasn't too crazy to
see the look on his face, I mean on my Uncle Dr. Parke Alden's face,
when he saw Miss Katherine coming across the front yard. We were
standing by the window, and as he saw her he looked again, as if he
didn't see good, and then his face got as white as whitewash. He took
out his handkerchief a