nd you--what have you been doing all these years?" I asked, turning
suddenly to Penelope.

"Just growing up," she answered, laughing. "It's very easy to grow up
when one has such a kind uncle as mine. You remember the poverty in
which he found me. I was a mere charity child, and he took me----"

"To his lively, pushing town," said I.

"Yes," Penelope went on, "to a big stone house with a green lawn about
it dotted with queer figures in iron and marble. They were the most
beautiful things I had ever seen--those statues. Now they are all
stored in the stable, for we grew up, uncle and I, even in matters of
art. But it was like heaven to me then, after the mountains and the
smoky cabin, after the clearing and the weeds----"

"After our farm," I broke in with a touch of irony, "and to ride behind
the fast trotters compared with our farm wagon----"

"David," returned Penelope in a voice of reproach, "I have never
forgotten the mountains, or the cabin, or the farm. In the first days
away from them I was terribly homesick for them all. My uncle suffered
for it. His patience and his kindness were unfailing, and he softened
me at last. There is nothing in the world that I have wanted that he
has not given me."

I was silent. The old boyish dislike of Rufus Blight had never died.
I could think of him only as a sleek, vulgar man who by the force of
his money had taken Penelope from me. His money had raised her far
above my reach, and even the cloud which shadowed this day which might
have been my brightest seemed to have had its birth in vapors of his
gold-giving furnaces. That I had forgotten Penelope and entangled
myself in the cords of a foolish sentimentality I charged to him, and
Penelope, seeing how I walked, silent, with eyes grimly set ahead,
divined that I still nourished the aversion to which in my childish
petulance I had given vent so long ago.

"You are still prejudiced against poor Uncle Rufus, I see," she said,
smiling. "I remember how badly you treated him that day when he came
to take me away."

"Yes, I never have forgiven him," I snapped out. "He may have reason,
and justice, and saintliness on his side, yet I never can forgive him."

"Oh, yes, you can," said Penelope with an indulgent laugh. "You will
when you come to know him as I do. You must, for my sake."

"Perhaps, for your sake," said I, relenting a little.

"I knew you would for my sake, David," said Penelope. "Why, I owe
ev