he eyes of all at the
table. She chattered with an abandon that scandalized Barbara; broke
in and interrupted every argument with hoydenish trivialities, in one
breath, to appeal to Garry the next for refutation. And Garry, the
light-tongued and quick-witted, sat almost dumb of lip before her happy
garrulity. But his eyes never left her; they spoke his thought aloud.
The quick lift and droop of her eyelids, the brilliancy of her lips,
made Miriam's face a living thing of happiness--made Barbara's silence
seem even more profound. For the latter's withdrawal from the
hilarity, dominated half the time by her father's booming bass, was
nearly as complete as was that of Wickersham himself.

Just once, shortly before they withdrew for the night, Steve caught a
gleam of mischief in the dark eyes she turned toward him. She rose the
next moment and started slowly around the room, poking demurely into
corners and closetted nooks. Every eye was following her when she
finally found the thing for which she was searching. She drew a red
felt, yellow-mottoed cushion from beneath the deer-hide covering a
chair, and held it up so that all might read. "What Is Home Without a
Father?" it ran, and when the joy that stormed through the room made it
sure that the exhibition needed no interpreter, Fat Joe turned and hid
his face. Miriam rose languidly and joined the other girl in an
examination of his handiwork. Smooth face tinted by the firelight,
copper hair almost dishevelled in its disarray, she was an exquisitely
lovely thing. In her alto voice she expressed her opinion.

"It's an entirely new stitch to me, Bobs," she averred. "I don't think
I have ever before seen just this method employed." And she turned to
Stephen O'Mara. "Do you suppose, Mr. O'Mara," she asked, "that I might
learn it from the one who did this work for you? It's rather"--and her
head tilted to one side--"it's rather a pretty thing!"

Again they succumbed to mirth, and then Joe rose, bristling, and went
forward much as a gamecock might step out to do battle. He took the
cushion from the hands of the girls, who no longer had strength enough
even to hold it.

"If you are aiming to do any sewing around this camp," he stated, "you
can start in sewing on buttons. This kind of work is entirely too
nerve-wearing for amateurs."

He carried the cushion across the room and placed it, not where it had
been hidden by the deer-hide, but in colorful prominence