his pocket her gift, and spun the top a moment
on his sleeve when it fell to the floor. Hertha picked it up as she had
picked up so many of his toys and put it in his brown hand where it
descended to his pocket again. She was standing now, looking into his
face. "Mammy told me," she said, "not to try to live in two worlds, not
until I was sure fixed in the new one and," shaking her head, "it takes
a long time to get fixed. But that wasn't the only reason. If I'd
written and they'd answered--it's such a little place, sometimes not
half-a-dozen letters in the post office--why, every one in Merryvale
would have known where I was."

She hesitated, blushing, but she had said enough. The look of anger on
the boy's face recalled suddenly to her remembrance the Sunday that they
had stopped on the porch of the great house and Lee Merryvale had tried
to send Tom home alone. Did he guess the shame of the weeks after his
departure, weeks that all her pride had not been able wholly to push
from her memory? She shrank at his rough answer.

"You're right," he said. "I's glad you won't have nothing to do with
that skunk."

There was a rush of feet on the kitchen stairs, and Bob surprised them
both by plunging into the room.

"What are you doing up so late?" Hertha demanded, but Bob did not hear
her.

"Miss Ogilvie," he said, all excitement, "the cook told me that Tom is
here."

"Yes," Hertha answered, and then with a gesture of introduction,
dropping into the phraseology of home said, "Bob, meet Tom."

The little boy showed a moment's surprise, then accepting the race of
his hero, Tom-of-the-Woods, as a simple fact, asked eagerly, "Did you
bring your top?"

Tom, surprised at this greeting, brought out the top again.

"Come along," Bob cried, and leading the way they all three went out of
the house down the stoop.

"You must do awfully well," Hertha whispered as under the street lamp
the hero of her story began slowly to wind his string.

"What you been giving him?" he asked, nodding to the little boy whose
gleaming blue eyes and intense interest in the proceedings augured more
than the mere pleasure in seeing a top spin.

"I've just been telling him a few things," she answered lightly.

She stood on the steps and watched with delight Tom's careful choice of
the best spot on the pavement for his spin and smiled to see the two
boy-faces, one so pink and white, the other so brown, each intent on the
business in hand.