a very long flight or very far
from mother. She can't spare me, and nobody in the world can fill her
place to me."

"Bless the child, does she think I'm going to make love to her,"
thought Randal, much amused, but quite mistaken. Wiser women had
thought so when he assumed the caressing air with which he beguiled
them into the little revelations of character he liked to use, as the
south wind makes flowers open their hearts to give up their odor, then
leaves them to carry it elsewhere, the more welcome for the stolen
sweetness.

"Perhaps you are right. The maternal wing is a safe shelter for
confiding little souls like you, Miss Ruth. You will be as comfortable
here as your flowers in this sunny window," he said, carelessly
pinching geranium leaves, and ruffling the roses till the pink petals
of the largest fluttered to the floor.

As if she instinctively felt and resented something in the man which
his act symbolized, the girl answered quietly, as she went on with her
work, "Yes, if the frost does not touch me, or careless people spoil
me too soon."

Before Randal could reply Aunt Plumy approached like a maternal hen
who sees her chicken in danger.

"Saul is goin' to haul wood after he's done his chores, mebbe you'd
like to go along? The view is good, the roads well broke, and the day
uncommon fine."

"Thanks; it will be delightful, I dare say," politely responded the
lion, with a secret shudder at the idea of a rural promenade at 8 A.M.
in the winter.

"Come on, then; we'll feed the stock, and then I'll show you how to
yoke oxen," said Saul, with a twinkle in his eye as he led the way,
when his new aide had muffled himself up as if for a polar voyage.

"Now, that's too bad of Saul! He did it on purpose, just to please
you, Sophie," cried Ruth presently, and the girls ran to the window to
behold Randal bravely following his host with a pail of pigs' food in
each hand, and an expression of resigned disgust upon his aristocratic
face.

"To what base uses may we come," quoted Emily, as they all nodded and
smiled upon the victim as he looked back from the barn-yard, where he
was clamorously welcomed by his new charges.

"It is rather a shock at first, but it will do him good, and Saul
won't be too hard upon him, I'm sure," said Sophie, going back to her
work, while Ruth turned her best buds to the sun that they might be
ready for a peace-offering to-morrow.

There was a merry clatter in the big kitchen for a