mured, "Amazing," under his
breath. Finally he went again to the Jacksons, and the next day he
said to Ted, "Ted, would you like to come away with me--live with
me--be my boy and have your gift for music thoroughly cultivated?"

"What do you mean, sir?" said Ted tremblingly.

"I mean that I want you--that I must have you, Ted. I've talked to Mr.
Jackson, and he has consented to let you come. You shall be educated,
you shall have the best masters in your art that the world affords,
you shall have the career I once dreamed of. Will you come, Ted?"

Ted drew a long breath. "Yes, sir," he said. "But it isn't so much
because of the music--it's because I love you, Mr. Milford, and I'm so
glad I'm to be always with you."

The Doctor's Sweetheart

Just because I am an old woman outwardly it doesn't follow that I am
one inwardly. Hearts don't grow old--or shouldn't. Mine hasn't, I am
thankful to say. It bounded like a girl's with delight when I saw
Doctor John and Marcella Barry drive past this afternoon. If the
doctor had been my own son I couldn't have felt more real pleasure in
his happiness. I'm only an old lady who can do little but sit by her
window and knit, but eyes were made for seeing, and I use mine for
that purpose. When I see the good and beautiful things--and a body
need never look for the other kind, you know--the things God planned
from the beginning and brought about in spite of the counter plans and
schemes of men, I feel such a deep joy that I'm glad, even at
seventy-five, to be alive in a world where such things come to pass.
And if ever God meant and made two people for each other, those people
were Doctor John and Marcella Barry; and that is what I always tell
folk who come here commenting on the difference in their ages. "Old
enough to be her father," sniffed Mrs. Riddell to me the other day. I
didn't say anything to Mrs. Riddell. I just looked at her. I presume
my face expressed what I felt pretty clearly. How any woman can live
for sixty years in the world, as Mrs. Riddell has, a wife and mother
at that, and not get some realization of the beauty and general
satisfactoriness of a real and abiding love, is something I cannot
understand and never shall be able to.

Nobody in Bridgeport believed that Marcella would ever come back,
except Doctor John and me--not even her Aunt Sara. I've heard people
laugh at me when I said I knew she would; but nobody minds being
laughed at when she is sure of