bles to
the hotel. Jimmy had been accustomed to bringing milk to the back
door and was quite an admirer of Mr. Braden, the genial proprietor.

Mr. Braden himself came into the kitchen just as they knocked at the
door. He was faultlessly dressed, and in a particularly happy mood,
for the first of July was one of his richest harvests, both in the
dining-room and in the bar, where many a dollar would be laid on the
altar of "auld lang syne"; and besides this, Sandy Braden was really
glad to see all the old timers, apart from any thought of making
money. He paid Jimmy for the vegetables, and gave him an extra
quarter for a treat for himself and the others.

Acting on a sudden impulse, Pearl said: "Mr. Braden, you know Bill
Cavers, don't you?"

Mr. Braden said he did.

"Well," said Pearl, "they've all come to town to-day. Mrs. Cavers
hasn't been here for ever so long, but Bill promised to stay sober
to-day if she'd come."

Pearl hesitated.

"Well, what else?" he said.

"They're goin' to have a photo taken to send home to her folks in
Ontario. Mrs. Cavers is all fixed up, with her hair curled, and Libby
Anne has a new dress made out of her mother's weddin' one, and Bill
is lookin' fine--he hasn't been drunk since that Sunday you took him
away from the school when we were havin' church."

Mr. Braden suddenly stopped smiling.

"And what I want to ask you, Mr. Braden, as a real favour, is not to
fill Bill up until they get the photo taken, anyway. You know how his
lip hangs when' he's drunk--he wouldn't look nice in a photo to send
home. Mrs. Cavers went all white and twitchy that day you took him
away from church. I was right behind her, and I guess that's how
she'd look in a photo if he got drunk, and she wouldn't look nice,
either; and even Libby Anne wouldn't be lookin' her best, because she
gets mad when her father is drunk, and says she'd like to kill you,
and burn up all your whiskey, and lots of things like that that ain't
real Christian. So you see, it would spoil the whole picture if you
let him get drunk."

Sandy Braden was not a hard-hearted man, and so, when Pearl told him
all this with her eyes on him straight and honest and fearless, he
was distinctly uncomfortable.

He tried to get a grip on himself. "Who told you to come to me about
it?" he asked suspiciously.

"Nobody told me," Pearl said. "I never thought of it myself until I
saw you lookin' so fine and such fine clothes on you, and you so ful