where the good woman was making fresh
cookies. He piled the little toys about her. "I'm going to market, to
market to buy a fat pig, and I'll be home again, riggy-jig-jig," he
declared in a singsong that fetched a chuckle from the waif, and she
followed him with a smile as he hurried out. "That smile will sweeten
a day's work in the trench," he assured himself. "I sure am some
foster-father when I get started!"

A listless clerk at the Consolidated office gave him a ticket to be
delivered to the foreman of construction--the foreman sent him out with
other men on a rattling jigger-wagon. By being very humble, and with the
aid of his smile, he succeeded in begging a corned-beef sandwich for
his breakfast from a workman on the jigger who was carrying his lunch to
work. He ate it very slowly so as to make the most of it.

The new trench was in a suburban plot which had just been opened up by a
real-estate syndicate. It was a bare tract, flat and dusty, and the
only trees were newly planted saplings that were about as large as
fishing-poles. How the sun did beat into that trench! But Walker Farr
threw off his coat and used again his ready asset--his smile. He smiled
at the boss who sneered at the style of "fiddler's hair" worn by a
dirt-flinger--smiled so sweetly that the boss came over later and hit
him a friendly clap on the shoulder and said, "Well, old scout, here's
hoping that times will be better!"

"I'll take her out on the bank of the canal this evening before bedtime
and we'll have a lark," reflected Walker Farr as he toiled in the hot
trench. And he stopped quizzing himself as to the whys of this sudden
devotion to a freakish notion. He seemed to know at last.

IX

THE GIRL FROM TADOUSAC

When the noon hour came Farr went and sat under a spindling tree and
began to read in one of his little books, dismissing thoughts of hunger
with the resoluteness of a man who had suffered hollow yearning of the
stomach and knew how to conquer it.

But he could not escape the keen eyes and kindly generosity of the
fraternity of toilers.

"A topper down on his luck a bit--see his clothes," said the foreman,
and he took tithes from willing men who were eating from pails that were
pinched between their knees; he carried the food to the young man.

Farr accepted with gratitude, ate with thrifty moderation, and hid what
remained in the pockets of his coat; it would serve for his supper.

He ate that supper after his d