at do you suppose I'm living for?"

"To make her like you, I hope," answered Peter gallantly. His
grandfather had loved Mrs. Caldwell, and his appreciation of her was
inherited.

"To make her so much wiser!"

"Wiser?" And Peter looked fondly up at the lovely old face above him.
For it was lovely, lovely with living, with the very years that might
have withered and spoiled it. To him the wisdom of such living was
beyond compare.

But she insisted: "Yes, so much wiser. Peter, in my youth it wasn't
ladylike to be too wise. I had a few womanly accomplishments. I
sewed. I sang. I read Jane Austen and Miss Edgeworth and Charlotte
Bronte. And I gardened a little--with gloves on and a shade hat to
protect my complexion. And sometimes I made a dessert. Peter dear, I
was a very nice girl, but--!" And she flung up her hands with a
gesture that mocked at her futility.

"Sheila can never be nicer!" he persisted loyally.

"Oh, yes, she can--if some one wiser than I teaches her!"

"I," said Peter importantly, "I teach her rhetoric at the Shadyville
Seminary. '"I," quoth the sparrow, "with my little bow and arrow!"'"

Mrs. Caldwell leaned forward and touched his shoulder. "I'm very
serious," she said. "Here's my little orphaned Sheila--my dead boy's
child--with no near kin in the world but me. And I'm not fit for the
task of helping her to grow up. Oh, Peter, will _you_ help?"

"You know I will! At least, I'll try."

She smiled at him through her earnestness. "Your rhetoric isn't
enough," she warned him. "All you know isn't enough. You'll have to
keep on learning too, Peter, if you're really going to help her."

"I will," he promised again. "I'm twenty-eight, and a lazy beggar--but
I can still learn."

Mrs. Caldwell drew a quick breath of relief: "Thank you, Peter. To
tell you the truth, I've been really a little frightened lately."

"About Sheila? But she's so sweet!"

"And so strange! She isn't like a child. And it's not because she's
outgrowing her childhood, for she's not like a young girl either.
Peter"--and Mrs. Caldwell's voice sank to a whisper now, as if she
communicated a dangerous thing--"Peter, she's like--_a poet_!"

Peter laughed outright at her timid pronouncement of the word. "But is
that so terrible?" he teased. "All poets are not mad, after all."

"Oh, you may laugh. I dare say my terror of a thing like genius is
funny. But it's genuine terror, Peter. What should I do