bottom, she did not like this, although the dairy was
her pride; but he joked and laughed so merrily that she could not help
joining in the laughter.

She chose a basin of milk upon the upper shelf, and stretched out her
arms to reach it.

"No, no, Miss Rebecca, it's too high for you!" cried Max; "let me hand
it down to you." And as he said so he laid his hand upon hers.

Rebecca hastily drew back her hand. She knew that her face had flushed,
and she almost felt as if she must burst into tears.

Then he said, softly and earnestly, lowering his eyes, "Pray, pardon
me, Miss Rebecca. I feel that my behavior must seem far too light and
frivolous to such a woman as you; but I should be sorry that you should
think of me as nothing but the empty coxcomb I appear to be. Merriment,
to many people, is merely a cloak for their sufferings, and there are
some who laugh only that they may not weep."

At the last words he looked up. There was something so mournful, and
at the same time so reverential, in his glance, that Rebecca all of
a sudden felt as if she had been unkind to him. She was accustomed to
reach things down from the upper shelf, but when she again stretched out
her hands for the basin of milk, she let her arms drop, and said, "No,
perhaps it _is_ too high for me, after all."

A faint smile passed over his face as he took the basin and carried it
carefully out; she accompanied him and opened the doors for him. Every
time he passed her she looked closely at him. His collar, his necktie,
his coat--everything was different from her father's, and he carried
with him a peculiar perfume which she did not know.

When they came to the garden door, he stopped for an instant, and
looked up with a melancholy smile: "I must take a moment to recover my
expression of gayety, so that no one out there may notice anything."

Then he passed out upon the steps with a joking speech to the company
at the table, and she heard their laughing answers; but she herself
remained behind in the garden-room.

Poor young man! how sorry she was for him; and how strange that she
of all people should be the only one in whom he confided. What secret
sorrow could it be that depressed him? Perhaps he, too, had lost his
mother. Or could it be something still mote terrible? How glad she would
be if only she could help him.

When Rebecca presently came out he was once more the blithest of them
all. Only once in a while, when he looked at her, his e