anyone so
pretty, not even Miss C'rona. You look like a picture I once saw on
Mr. Sherwood's table when I was up at the manse one day 'fore I got
so bad I couldn't walk. It was a woman with a li'l baby in her arms
and a kind of rim round her head. I would like something most awful
much."

"What is it, dear?" said Frances gently. "If I can get or do it for
you, I will."

"You could," he said wistfully, "but maybe you won't want to. But I do
wish you'd come here just once every day and sit here five minutes and
let me look at you--just that. Will it be too much trouble?"

Frances stooped and kissed him. "I will come every day, Jacky," she
said; and a look of ineffable content came over the thin little face.
He put up his hand and touched her cheek.

"I knew you were good--as good as Miss C'rona, and she is an angel. I
love you."

When morning came Frances went home. It was raining, and the sea was
hidden in mist. As she walked along the wet road, Elliott Sherwood
came splashing along in a little two-wheeled gig and picked her up. He
wore a raincoat and a small cap, and did not look at all like a
minister--or, at least, like Frances's conception of one.

Not that she knew much about ministers. Her own minister at home--that
is to say, the minister of the fashionable uptown church which she
attended--was a portly, dignified old man with silvery hair and
gold-rimmed glasses, who preached scholarly, cultured sermons and was
as far removed from Frances's personal life as a star in the Milky
Way.

But a minister who wore rubber coats and little caps and drove about
in a two-wheeled gig, very much mud-bespattered, and who talked about
the shore people as if they were household intimates of his, was
absolutely new to Frances.

She could not help seeing, however, that the crisp brown hair under
the edges of the unclerical-looking cap curled around a remarkably
well-shaped forehead, beneath which flashed out a pair of very fine
dark-grey eyes; he had likewise a good mouth, which was resolute and
looked as if it might be stubborn on occasion; and, although he was
not exactly handsome, Frances decided that she liked his face.

He tucked the wet, slippery rubber apron of his conveyance about her
and then proceeded to ask questions. Jacky Hart's case had to be
reported on, and then Mr. Sherwood took out a notebook and looked over
its entries intently.

"Do you want any more work of that sort to do?" he asked her abruptly