larity in Mr. Windibrook,
and a playful push. "YOU don't know? Ha, but I do. Yes, sir,"--to the
visitor,--"I have reason to remember it. I called upon him the next day.
I used, sir, the freedom of an old friend. 'Trixit,' I said, clapping
my hand on his shoulder, 'the Lord has been good to you. I congratulate
you.'

"'H'm!' he said, without looking up. 'What do you reckon those
congratulations are worth?'

"Many a man, sir, who didn't know his style, would have been staggered.
But I knew my man. I looked him straight in the eye. 'A new organ,' I
said, 'and as good a one as Sacramento can turn out.'

"He took up a piece of paper, scrawled a few lines on it to his cashier,
and said, 'Will that do?'" Mr. Windibrook's voice sank to a thrilling
whisper. "It was an order for one thousand dollars! Fact, sir. THAT is
the father of this young lady."

"Ye had better luck than Bishop Briggs had with old Johnson, the
Excelsior Bank president," said the visitor, encouraged by Windibrook's
"heartiness" into a humorous retrospect. "Briggs goes to him for a
subscription for a new fence round the buryin'-ground--the old one
havin' rotted away. 'Ye don't want no fence,' sez Johnson, short like.
'No fence round a buryin'-ground?' sez Briggs, starin'. 'No! Them as is
IN the buryin'-ground can't get OUT, and them as ISN'T don't want to
get IN, nohow! So you kin just travel--I ain't givin' money away on
uselessnesses!' Ha! ha!"

A chill silence followed, which checked even Piney's giggle. Mr.
Windibrook evidently had no "heartiness" for non-subscribing
humor. "There are those who can jest with sacred subjects," he said
ponderously, "but I have always found Mr. Trixit, though blunt,
eminently practical. Your father is still away," he added, shifting the
conversation to Cissy, "hovering wherever he can extract the honey to
store up for the provision of age. An industrious worker."

"He's still away," said Cissy, feeling herself on safe ground, though
she was not aware of her father's entomological habits. "In San
Francisco, I think."

She was glad to get away from Mr. Windibrook's "heartiness" and console
herself with Mrs. Windibrook's constitutional depression, which was
partly the result of nervous dyspepsia and her husband's boisterous
cordiality. "I suppose, dear, you are dreadfully anxious about your
father when he is away from home?" she said to Cissy, with a sympathetic
sigh.

Cissy, conscious of never having felt a moment's