and Miss
Stella clapped her slender hands.

"O Dan, Dan!" cried poor little Miss Polly, sobbing outright. "A newsboy
and bootblack! Oh, how could you fool me so, Dan?"

"With your infernal lies about your home and family!" burst forth dad, in
sudden wrath at Polly's tears.

"I didn't fool,--I didn't lie, sir!" blurted out Dan, fiercely. "I did
nothing of the kind!"

"If you will kindly do the boy justice to remember, he did _not_, Cousin
Pem!" and Miss Stella's clear, sweet voice rose in witness. "You gave his
family history yourself. He did not know what you were talking about, with
your Crusading ancestors and the D'Olanes. I could see it in his face. You
are all blood-blind up here, Cousin Pem. I was laughing to myself all the
time, for I guessed who Dan Dolan was. I knew he was at St. Andrew's. His
dear old Aunt Winnie is one of my truest friends."

"O Marraine, Marraine!" murmured Polly, eagerly. "And--and you don't mind
it if--"

"If she is with the Little Sisters of the Poor, Pollykins? Not a bit! Some
day I may be there myself. Now that this tempest in a teapot is over, you
can all go off and finish your games. I am going to sit under this nice
old tree and talk to Miss Winnie's boy."

And while dad, still a little hot at the trouble that had marred Polly's
party, started the fun in another direction, Miss Stella gathered her
silvery gown around her and sat down on the rustic bench beneath the old
cedar, and talked to Dan. He learned how Aunt Winnie had sewed patiently
and skilfully for this lovely lady a dozen years ago, when she was
spending a gay season in his own town; and how the gentle old seamstress,
with her simple faith and tender sympathy, her wise warnings to the gay,
motherless girl, had won a place in her heart.

"I tried to coax her home with me," said Miss Stella, "to make it 'home,'
as I felt she could; but Baby Danny was in the way,--the little Danny that
she could not leave."

Then Dan, in his turn, told about Killykinick, and how he had been sent
there for the summer and had met little Polly.

"I should have told," he said, lifting Aunt Winnie's own blue Irish eyes
to Miss Stella's face,--"I should have said right out straight and square
that I wasn't Polly's kind, and had no right to push in here with grand
folks like hers. But it was all so fine it sort of turned my head."

"It will do that," replied Miss Stella, softly. "It has turned mine often,
Danny. But now we both see stra