me Dawn. Dawn O'Hara! His
sense of humor must have been sleeping. "You were such a rosy, pinky,
soft baby thing," Mother had once told me, "that you looked just like
the first flush of light at sunrise. That is why your father insisted on
calling you Dawn."

Poor Dad! How could he know that at twenty-eight I would be a yellow
wreck of a newspaper reporter--with a wrinkle between my eyes. If he
could see me now he would say:

"Sure, you look like the dawn yet, me girl but a Pittsburgh dawn."

At that, Mother, if she were here, would pat my check where the hollow
place is, and murmur: "Never mind, Dawnie dearie, Mother thinks you are
beautiful just the same." Of such blessed stuff are mothers made.

At this stage of the memory game I would bury my face in the warm grass
and thank my God for having taken Mother before Peter Orme came into my
life. And then I would fall asleep there on the soft, sweet grass, with
my head snuggled in my arms, and the ants wriggling, unchided, into my
ears.

On the last of these sylvan occasions I awoke, not with a graceful
start, like the story-book ladies, but with a grunt. Sis was digging
me in the ribs with her toe. I looked up to see her standing over me,
a foaming tumbler of something in her hand. I felt that it was eggy and
eyed it disgustedly.

"Get up," said she, "you lazy scribbler, and drink this."

I sat up, eyeing her severely and picking grass and ants out of my hair.

"D' you mean to tell me that you woke me out of that babe-like slumber
to make me drink that goo? What is it, anyway? I'll bet it's another
egg-nogg."

"Egg-nogg it is; and swallow it right away, because there are guests to
see you."

I emerged from the first dip into the yellow mixture and fixed on her as
stern and terrible a look at any one can whose mouth is encircled by a
mustache of yellow foam.

"Guests!" I roared, "not for me! Don't you dare to say that they came to
see me!"

"Did too," insists Norah, with firmness, "they came especially to see
you. Asked for you, right from the jump."

I finished the egg-nogg in four gulps, returned the empty tumbler with
an air of decision, and sank upon the grass.

"Tell 'em I rave. Tell 'em that I'm unconscious, and that for weeks I
have recognized no one, not even my dear sister. Say that in my present
nerve-shattered condition I--"

"That wouldn't satisfy them," Norah calmly interrupts, "they know
you're crazy because they saw you out here from the