ith a gruff brevity. She was far from ready to
be placated yet.

"David Marshall's daughter! Then, my dear child, why not have said so
in the first place, without lugging in everybody and everything else
you could think of? Hasn't your father ever spoken of me? And how is
he, anyway? I haven't seen him--to really speak to him--for fifteen
years. It may be even more."

She seemed to have laid hands on a heavy bar, to have wrenched it from
its holds, to have flung it aside from the footpath, and to be
inviting Jane to advance without let or hindrance.

But Jane stood there with pique in her breast, and her long thin arms
laid rigid against her sides. "Let her 'dear child' me, if she wants
to; she sha'n't bring me around in any such way as that."

All this, however, availed little against Mrs. Bates's new manner. The
citadel so closely sealed to charity was throwing itself wide open to
memory. The portcullis was dropped, and the late enemy was invited to
advance as a friend.

Nay, urged. Mrs. Bates presently seized Jane's unwilling hands. She
gathered those poor, stiff, knotted fingers into two crackling bundles
within her own plump and warm palms, squeezed them forcibly, and
looked into Jane's face with all imaginable kindness. "I had just that
temper once myself," she said.

The sluice gates of caution and reserve were opening wide; the streams
of tenderness and sympathy were bubbling and fretting to take their
course.

"And your father is well? And you are living in the same old place?
Oh, this terrible town! You can't keep your old friends; you can
hardly know your new ones. We are only a mile or two apart, and yet it
is the same as if it were a hundred."

Jane yielded up her hands half unwillingly. She could not, in spite of
herself, remain completely unrelenting, but she was determined not to
permit herself to be patronized. "Yes, we live in the same old place.
And in the same old way," she added--in the spirit of concession.

Mrs. Bates studied her face intently. "Do you look like him--like your
father?"

"No," answered Jane. "Not so very much. Nor like any of the rest of
the family." The statue was beginning to melt. "I'm unique." And
another drop fell.

"Don't slander yourself." She tapped Jane lightly on the shoulder.

Jane looked at her with a protesting, or at least a questioning,
seriousness. It had the usual effect of a wild stare. "I wasn't
meaning to," she said, shortly, and began to congeal