pleasant part of it. She never
touched his depths or rose to his heights. She seemed to beckon, yet
not to care when he came.

He spoke of her that night to Emily. "Hilda was here to-day and she
reminded me that people might think that my daughter is marrying Derry
Drake for his money."

"She would look at it like that."

"When Hilda talks to me"--he was rumpling his hair--"I have a feeling
that all the people in the world are unlovely--"

"There are plenty of unlovely people," said Emily, "but why should we
worry with what they think?"

She was knitting, and he found himself watching her hands. "You have
pretty hands," he told her, unexpectedly.

She held them out in front of her. "When I was a little girl my mother
told me that I had three points of beauty--my hands, my feet, and the
family nose," she smiled whimsically, "and she assured me that I would
therefore never be common-place. 'Any woman may be beautiful,' was her
theory, 'but only a woman with good blood in her veins can have hands
and feet and a nose like yours--.' I was dreadfully handicapped in the
beginning of my life by my mother's point of view. I am afraid that
even now if the dear lady looks down from Heaven and sees me working in
my Toy Shop she will feel the family disgraced by this one member who
is in trade. It was only in the later years that I found myself, that
I realized how I might reach out towards things which were broader and
bigger than the old ideals of aristocratic birth and inherited
possessions."

He thought of Hilda. "Yet it gave you something, Emily," he said,
slowly, "that not every woman has: good-breeding, and the ability to
look above the sordid. You are like Jean--all your world is
rose-colored."

She was thoughtful. "Not quite like Jean. I heard a dear old bishop
ask the other day why we should see only the ash cans and garbage cans
in our back yards when there was blue sky above? I know there are ash
cans and garbage cans, but I make myself look at the sky. Jean doesn't
know that the cans are there."

"The realists will tell you that you should keep your eyes on the cans."

"I don't believe it," said Miss Emily, stoutly; "more people are made
good by the contemplation of the fine and beautiful than by the
knowledge of evil. Eve knew that punishment would follow the eating of
the apple. But she ate it. If I had a son I should tell him of the
strength of men, not of their weaknesses."

He nodd