d take the
goods the gods provide."

She maintained this spirit throughout the ensuing fortnight, in spite of
his evident effort to make her acknowledge that she would feel her own
disappointment the more for his going. When he came over to say good-bye
he found her apparently in the gayest of spirits; and she gave him such
a friendly send-off that he went away marvelling in his heart at the
ways of young women, and the ways of Georgiana Warne in particular.

CHAPTER XVIII

"STEADY ON!"

On the day following the departure of James Stuart for England, while
the two literary workmen were hard at it in the old manse study, the
July weather having mercifully turned decidedly cooler for a space, the
village telegraph messenger, a tall youth with a shambling gait,
appeared with a message for Mr. Jefferson. Georgiana brought it to him,
and waited to know whether there was a reply.

She saw the message--evidently a long one--twice read, and noticed a
peculiar lighting of the grave face which had bent over it. Mr.
Jefferson wrote an answer, briefer than the message received, and
himself took it to the waiting boy. When he returned he sat down and
began to put in order the papers on which he had been working.

"I have another trade, as you have guessed," he said to Georgiana. "It
seems necessary for me to go away and work at it for a few days, perhaps
a fortnight. It is fortunate for me that you are here, for I should not
have felt that I ought to leave your father, and yet I should hardly
have been able to refuse the call of that message."

"Then I am very glad," she returned, "that I am here. Can you leave me
work to do?"

"I am afraid not, beyond that already laid out for to-day. Won't you
rest while I am gone? This is vacation time for most people, you know."

She shook her head. "With only father to look after I shall have little
enough to do."

"You won't--forgive me!--go up into that blistering attic and make rugs?
I hope not!" She felt that he was looking keenly at her.

"Why should you hope not? I am one of the people who must be busy to be
contented. How soon do you go, Mr. Jefferson?"

"On the noon train." He looked at his watch. "I have an hour to make
ready. No, don't go. I will come back when I am ready, and we will put
things in shape to leave, so that we shall know exactly where to take
them up again."

In half an hour he was back, and together the two put the results of
their joint work i