t quiet--thinking of Allan! She tried to put him
resolutely from her mind, and think about her own future plans. The
first thing to do, she decided, was to rub up her library work a little.

It was with an unexpected feeling of having returned to her own place
that she crossed the marble floor of the village library. She felt as if
she ought to hurry down to the cloak-room, instead of waiting leisurely
at the desk for her card. It all seemed uncannily like home--there was
even a girl inside the desk who looked like Anna Black of her own
Greenway Branch. Phyllis could hear, with a faint amusement, that the
girl was scolding energetically in Anna Black's own way. The words
struck on her quick ears, though they were not intended to carry.

"That's what comes of trusting to volunteer help. Telephones at the last
moment 'she has a headache,' and not a single soul to look after the
story-hour! And the children are almost all here already."

"We'll just have to send them home," said the other girl, looking up
from her trayful of cards. "It's too late to get anybody else, and
goodness knows _we_ can't get it in!"

"They ought to have another librarian," fretted the girl who looked like
Anna. "They could afford it well enough, with their Soldiers' Monuments
and all."

Phyllis smiled to herself from where she was investigating the
card-catalogue. It all sounded so exceedingly natural. Then that swift
instinct of hers to help caught her over to the desk, and she heard
herself saying:

"I've had some experience in story telling; maybe I could help you with
the story-hour. I couldn't help hearing that your story-teller has
disappointed you."

The girl like Anna fell on her with rapture.

"Heaven must have sent you," she said. The other one, evidently slower
and more cautious by nature, rose too, and came toward her. "You have a
card here, haven't you?" she said. "I think I've seen you."

"Yes," Phyllis said, with a pang at speaking the name she had grown to
love bearing; "I'm Mrs. Harrington--Phyllis Harrington. We live at the
other end of the village."

"Oh, in the house with the garden all shut off from the lane!" said the
girl like Anna, delightedly. "That lovely old house that used to belong
to the Jamesons. Oh, yes, I know. You're here for the summer, aren't
you, and your husband has been very ill?"

"Exactly," said Phyllis, smiling, though she wished people wouldn't talk
about Allan! They seemed possessed to menti