n when her
health failed. I wasn't enough for her; she needed father and her face
was bent towards him. My hands were busy again for months, and they
held my mother's when she died. Time went on. Then I began again to
make a home out of a house; to use my strength and time as a good wife
should, for the comfort of her husband; but oh! so faultily, for I was
all too young and inexperienced. It was only for a few months, then
death came into my life for the third time, and I was less than
twenty. For the first time since I can remember, my hands are idle,
but it will not be for long. I want them to be busy always. I want
them to be full! I want them to be tired! I want them ready to do the
tasks my head and heart suggest."

Lavendar had a strong desire to take those same hands in his and kiss
them, but instead he rose and spread out his own long brown fingers on
the edge of the wall, a man's hands, fine and supple, but meant to
work.

"I seem to have done nothing," he exclaimed. "You look so young, so
irresponsible, so like a bird on a bough, that I cannot associate dull
care with you, yet you have lived more deeply than I. Life seems to
have touched me on the shoulder and passed me by; these hands of mine
have never done a real day's work, Mrs. Loring, for they've been the
servants of an unwilling brain. I hated my own work as a younger man,
and, though I hope I did not shirk it, I certainly did nothing that I
could avoid." He paused, and went on slowly, "I've thought sometimes,
of late I mean, that if life is to be worth much, if it is to be real
life, and not mere existence, one must put one's whole heart into it,
and that two people--" He stopped; he was silent with embarrassment,
conscious of having said too much.

"Can help each other. Indeed they can," Mrs. Loring went on serenely,
"if they have the same ideals. Hardly anyone, fortunately, is so alone
as I, and so I have to help myself! Your sisters, now; don't they
help?"

"Not a great deal," Lavendar confessed. "One would, but she's married
and in India, worse luck! The other is--well, she's a candid sister."
He laughed, and looked up. "If my best friend could hear my sister
Amy's view of me, just have a little sketch of me by Amy without fear
or favour, he, or she, would never have a very high opinion of me
again, and I am not sure but that I should agree with her."

"Nonsense! my dear friend," exclaimed Robinette in a maternal tone she
sometimes affected