e you got a dishpan?" she inquired.

"Oh, you don't need to mind that. I have n't got anything you are used
to. I just take them down to the stream and swab them off with a bunch
of dry grass."

"Oh!" remarked Janet.

She felt, however, that it would be easier to be doing something. She
gathered things together and made general unrest among the dishes. Mr.
Brown, instead of being stirred by this operation of cleaning up,
stretched himself out more contentedly, moved up a little closer, and
took still fuller possession of her presence; and as he did so he poked
up the fire and struck her a light on a new topic. But this time the
train of conversation did not catch. Janet was thinking. And like
most of us she could not talk well while thinking.

Mr. Brown seemed quite contented, then, with silence and peace.
Evidently he too was thinking. After a little time he sat up and
reached into an inside pocket. He drew forth a large leather wallet
which, upon being opened, disclosed two compartments well filled with
bank-notes and documentary-looking papers. There was another
compartment with a flap on it and a separate fastening, opening which
he took out an object wrapped in tissue paper. Having carefully
unwrapped it, he folded the paper again and placed it where it would
not blow away.

"That's my mother's picture," he said, handing it over formally to his
guest.

Janet received it rather vaguely and sat looking at it, saying nothing.

"She died just last winter," he added, in his usual deliberate way.

"Oh, did she?"

What else to say, she hardly knew. Turning it to the light she studied
it more closely and noted each resemblance to his own features, looking
up at him in an impersonal sort of way and with a soberness of
countenance which was a reflection of his own entirely serious mood.

"She had a very kind-looking face," she said.

To this there was no reply. Janet, about to hand it back, was
momentarily in doubt as to how long a proper respect should prompt her
to retain it; this, however, settled itself when she observed that he
had ready to offer her a long newspaper clipping.

"I had the editor put some of that in myself," he said, reaching the
long ribbon of paper over to her.

It was an obituary of Mrs. Stephen P. Brown, who passed to "the realms
beyond" on the eighteenth of November. With this Janet found no
difficulty.

"But," he added suddenly as it occurred to him, "I did n't have