a picture
far ahead of anything in Atchison's collection. I should be an
unappreciative host indeed if I didn't make the most of it."

"What an artful speech!" laughed Mrs. Brainard, lifting fine eyes in an
attempt to make out the shadowy face above her. "It's well calculated to
distract our attention from the fact that you are not changing your
position by so much as the moving of an arm. We came to see you, man, not
to show ourselves to you."

"We came to cheer his loneliness," put in Hugh Breckenridge with a
peculiar, cynical-sounding little laugh for which he was famous. "And
we find him up to his neck in boys. Jove! How do you stand their
dirty hands, Don? That's what would get me, no matter how good my
intentions were."

"Those hands were every pair scrubbed to a finish, to-day, in honour of
Thanksgiving. Do you think we have no manners here?" retorted Brown.

"That wasn't the dinner party you wrote me of when you refused to come
to mine, was it, Don?" questioned his sister.

"No. This was an after-dinner party, partaking of the 'lavin's,'" Brown
explained. "The real one was over an hour before."

"Do tell us about it. Did you enjoy it? Won't you describe your guests?"
Mrs. Brainard spoke eagerly.

"With pleasure. The Kelceys are my next-door neighbours on the left. Mrs.
Kelcey is pure gold--in the rough. Her husband is not quite her equal,
but he knows it and strives to be worthy of her. The Murdisons, on the
other side, are--Scotch granite--splendid building material. Old Mr.
Benson, the watchmaker, is--well, he's full-jewelled. The others I
perhaps can't characterize quite so easily, but among them I find several
uncut gems of the semi-precious varieties. Of course there's considerable
commonplace material--if you can ever call the stuff of which human
beings are made commonplace, which I doubt. There's more or less copper
and brass, with a good bit of clay--as there is in all of us. And a deal
of a more spiritual element which can't be measured or described, but
which makes them all worth knowing."

He had spoken in a thoughtful tone, as if he took Mrs. Brainard's
question seriously and meant to answer it in the same way. A moment's
silence followed. Then Doctor Brainard said slowly:

"I suppose you don't find those priceless elements among the people of
your abandoned parish. Down there we're all copper and clay, eh?"

"If you had been clay I might have done more with you," was the
quick retort.