ing on with me not earning it."

"Listen to him, Miss Alice! Wouldn't you think, now, he'd let me be the
one to worry about that? Why, on my word, if your daddy had his way, _I_
wouldn't be anywhere. He'd take all my worrying and everything else off
my shoulders and shove me right out of Lamb and Company! He would!"

"It seems to me I've been soldiering on you a pretty long while, Mr.
Lamb," the convalescent said, querulously. "I don't feel right about it;
but I'll be back in ten days. You'll see."

The old man took his hand in parting. "All right; we'll see, Virgil. Of
course we do need you, seriously speaking; but we don't need you so bad
we'll let you come down there before you're fully fit and able." He went
to the door. "You hear, Miss Alice? That's what I wanted to make the old
feller understand, and what I want you to kind of enforce on him. The
old place is there waiting for him, and it'd wait ten years if it took
him that long to get good and well. You see that he remembers it, Miss
Alice!"

She went down the stairs with him, and he continued to impress this upon
her until he had gone out of the front door. And even after that, the
husky voice called back from the darkness, as he went to his car, "Don't
forget, Miss Alice; let him take his own time. We always want him, but
we want him to get good and well first. Good-night, good-night, young
lady!"

When she closed the door her mother came from the farther end of the
"living-room," where there was no light; and Alice turned to her.

"I can't help liking that old man, mama," she said. "He always sounds
so--well, so solid and honest and friendly! I do like him."

But Mrs. Adams failed in sympathy upon this point. "He didn't say
anything about raising your father's salary, did he?" she asked, dryly.

"No."

"No. I thought not."

She would have said more, but Alice, indisposed to listen, began to
whistle, ran up the stairs, and went to sit with her father. She found
him bright-eyed with the excitement a first caller brings into a slow
convalescence: his cheeks showed actual hints of colour; and he was
smiling tremulously as he filled and lit his pipe. She brought the
crocheted scarf and put it about his shoulders again, then took a chair
near him.

"I believe seeing Mr. Lamb did do you good, papa," she said. "I sort of
thought it might, and that's why I let him come up. You really look a
little like your old self again."

Adams exhaled a breathy "Ha!