ad left her; that none was in the habit of
laying his warm cheek against her brow; and perhaps that was why she had
said aloud to herself, "Kitty Tynan, Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!"
Perhaps--and perhaps not.

As she stepped forward towards the door she heard a voice within the
house, and she quickened her footsteps. The blood in her face, the look
in her eye quickened also. And now a figure appeared in the doorway--a
figure in shirt-sleeves, which shook a fist at the hurrying girl.

"Villain'!" he said gaily, for he was in one of his absurd, ebullient
moods--after a long talk with Jesse Bulrush. "Hither with my coat; my
spotless coat in a spotted world,--the unbelievable anomaly--

"'For the earth of a dusty to-day
Is the dust of an earthy to-morrow.'"

When he talked like this she did not understand him, but she thought
it was clever beyond thinking--a heavenly jumble. "If it wasn't for me
you'd be carted for rubbish," she replied joyously as she helped him on
with his coat, though he had made a motion to take it from her.

"I heard you singing--what was it?" he asked cheerily, while it could
be seen that his mind was preoccupied. The song she had sung, floating
through the air, had seemed familiar to him, while he had been greatly
engaged with a big business thing he had been planning for a long
time, with Jesse Bulrush in the background or foreground, as scout or
rear-guard or what you will:

"'Whereaway, whereaway goes the lad that once was mine?
Hereaway, I waited him, hereaway and oft--'"

she hummed with an exaggerated gaiety in her voice, for the song had
saddened her, she knew not why. At the words the flaming exhilaration of
the man's face vanished and his eyes took on a poignant, distant look.

"That--oh, that!" he said, and with a little jerk of the head and a
clenching of the hand he moved towards the street.

"Your hat!" she called after him, and ran inside the house. An instant
later she gave it to him. Now his face was clear and his eyes smiled
kindly at her.

"'Whereaway, hereaway' is a wonderful song," he said. "We used to sing
it when I was a boy--and after, and after. It's an old song--old as the
hills. Well, thanks, Kitty Tynan. What a girl you are--to be so kind to
a fellow like--me!"

"Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!"--these were the very words she had
used about herself a little while before. The song--why did it make
Mr. Kerry take on such a queer