h, Sylvia, you've found out what I
never meant you to know. But I don't mind that now, either."

Sylvia took the Old Lady's thin white hand and kissed it.

"I can never thank you enough for what you have done for me, dearest
Miss Lloyd," she said earnestly. "And I am so glad that all mystery is
done away with between us, and I can love you as much and as openly as
I have longed to do. I am so glad and so thankful that you love me, dear
fairy godmother."

"Do you know WHY I love you so?" said the Old Lady wistfully. "Did I let
THAT out in my raving, too?"

"No, but I think I know. It is because I am Leslie Gray's daughter,
isn't it? I know that father loved you--his brother, Uncle Willis, told
me all about it."

"I spoiled my own life because of my wicked pride," said the Old Lady
sadly. "But you will love me in spite of it all, won't you, Sylvia? And
you will come to see me sometimes? And write me after you go away?"

"I am coming to see you every day," said Sylvia. "I am going to stay
in Spencervale for a whole year yet, just to be near you. And next year
when I go to Europe--thanks to you, fairy godmother--I'll write you
every day. We are going to be the best of chums, and we are going to
have a most beautiful year of comradeship!"

The Old Lady smiled contentedly. Out in the kitchen, the minister's
wife, who had brought up a dish of jelly, was talking to Mrs. Spencer
about the Sewing Circle. Through the open window, where the red vines
hung, came the pungent, sun-warm October air. The sunshine fell over
Sylvia's chestnut hair like a crown of glory and youth.

"I do feel so perfectly happy," said the Old Lady, with a long,
rapturous breath.

III. Each In His Own Tongue

The honey-tinted autumn sunshine was falling thickly over the crimson
and amber maples around old Abel Blair's door. There was only one outer
door in old Abel's house, and it almost always stood wide open. A little
black dog, with one ear missing and a lame forepaw, almost always slept
on the worn red sandstone slab which served old Abel for a doorstep;
and on the still more worn sill above it a large gray cat almost always
slept. Just inside the door, on a bandy-legged chair of elder days, old
Abel almost always sat.

He was sitting there this afternoon--a little old man, sadly twisted
with rheumatism; his head was abnormally large, thatched with long, wiry
black hair; his face was heavily lined and swarthily sunburned; his
eye