m, kneeling, with her snow-touched head upon his knee.

"So am I. Tired, tired! I could not do without you. I have leaned on you
far too long; we all have. Now, dear, lean on me for the rest of the
way."

He bent his grizzled head upon hers and his eyes had the look of prayer
that Priscilla once discovered.

"Dick--has not told me his real trouble," Helen faintly said. "I know it
is somehow connected with a--nurse."

"The redheaded one," Ledyard put in; "a regular little marplot!" Then he
gave that gruff laugh of his that Helen knew to be a signal of surrender.

"It's odd," he went on, "how one can admire and respect when often he
disapproves. I disapprove of this--redheaded girl, but, if it will
comfort you any, my child, I will tell you this: Dick's future, in her
hands, would be founded on--on everlasting rock!"

"Perhaps--she won't have him!"

"Helen"--and Ledyard caught her to him--"you never would have said that
if you had been Dick's mother!"

"Perhaps--not!"

"No. You and I have only played second fiddles, first and last; but
second fiddles come in handy!"

The room grew dim and shadowy, and the two in the western window clung
together.

"Have you heard--John, that Margaret Moffatt has broken her engagement to
Clyde Huntter?"

"Yes. Where did you hear it?"

"She came--to see me; wanted to know how I was. She was very beautiful
and dear. She talked a good deal about that--that----"

"Redheaded nurse?" asked Ledyard.

"Yes. I couldn't quite see any connecting link then, but you know Dick
did go to that Swiss village last summer. I fear the party wasn't
properly chaperoned, for 'twas there he met--the nurse!"

"It--was!" grunted Ledyard.

"There is something sadly wrong with this broken engagement of
Margaret's, but I imagine no one will ever know. Girls are so--so
different from what they used to be."

"Yes," but a tone of doubt was in Ledyard's voice. Presently he said:
"Since Dick has left, or may leave, the profession, I suppose he'll take
to writing. He's always told me that when he could afford to, he'd like
to cut the traces and wollop the race with his pen. Many doctors would
like to do that. A gag and a chain and ball are not what they're cracked
up to be. The pen is mightier than the pill, sometimes, but it often
eliminates the butter from the bread."

Helen caught at the only part of this speech that she understood.

"There's the little income I'm living on," she said; "it's Dic