e attack that first morning Felix had
understood so well, lifting and putting the refractory animal back in
her arms instead of driving him off with a kick. Fudge, whose manners
were improving, had not forgotten either and was always under O'Day's
feet except when being fondled by the child.

Until Felix came she had had no other companions, some innate reserve
keeping her from romping with the children on the street, her sole
diversion, except when playing at home among her father's possessions or
making a visit to Kitty, being found in the books of fairy-tales which
the old hunchback, Tim Kelsey, had lent her. At first this natural
shyness had held her aloof even from O'Day, content only to watch his
face as he answered her childish appeals. But before the first week had
passed she had slipped her hand into his, and before the month was over
her arms were around his neck, her fresh, soft cheek against his own,
cuddling close as she poured out her heart in a continuous flow of
prattle and laughter, her father looking on in blank amazement.

For, while Kling loved her as most fathers love their motherless
daughters, Felix had seen at a glance that he was either too engrossed
in his business or too dense and unimaginative to understand so winning
a child. She was Masie, "dot little girl of mine dot don't got no
mudder," or "Beesvings, who don't never be still," but that was about as
far as his notice of her went, except sending her to school, seeing that
she was fed and clothed, and on such state occasions as Christmas, New
Year's, or birthdays, giving her meaningless little presents, which, in
most instances, were shut up in her bureau drawers, never to be looked
at again.

Kitty, who remembered the child's mother as a girl with a far-away look
in her eyes and a voice of surprising sweetness, always maintained that
it was a shame for Kling, who was many years her senior, to have married
the girl at all.

"Not, John, dear, that Otto isn't a decent man, as far as he goes,"
she had once said to him, when the day's work was over and they were
discussing their neighbors, "and that honest, too, that he wouldn't get
away with a sample trunk weighing a ton if it was nailed fast to the
sidewalk, and a good friend of ours who wouldn't go back on us, and
never did. But that wife of his, John! If she wasn't as fine as the best
of em, then I miss my guess. She got it from that father of hers--the
clock-maker that never went out