look all at once when he heard it? Kitty
watched him striding down the street into the town.

Now a voice--a rich, quizzical, kindly voice-called out to her:

"Come, come, Miss Tynan, I want to be helped on with my coat," it said.

Inside the house a fat, awkward man was struggling, or pretending to
struggle, into his coat.

"Roll into it, Mr. Rolypoly," she answered cheerily as she entered.

"Of course I'm not the star boarder--nothing for me!" he said in
affected protest.

"A little more to starboard and you'll get it on," she retorted with
a glint of her late father's raillery, and she gave the coat a twitch
which put it right on the ample shoulders.

"Bully! bully!" he cried. "I'll give you the tip for the Askatoon cup."

"I'm a Christian. I hate horse-racers and gamblers," she returned
mockingly.

"I'll turn Christian--I want to be loved," he bleated from the doorway.

"Roll on, proud porpoise!" she rejoined, which shows that her
conversation was not quite aristocratic at all times.

"Golly, but she's a gold dollar in a gold bank," remarked Jesse Bulrush
warmly as he lurched into the street.

The girl stood still in the middle of the room looking dreamily down the
way the two men had gone.

The quiet of the late summer day surrounded her. She heard the dizzy din
of the bees, the sleepy grinding of the grass hoppers, the sough of
the solitary pine at the door, and then behind them all a whizzing,
machine-like sound. This particular sound went on and on.

She opened the door of the next room. Her mother sat at a sewing-machine
intent upon some work, the needle eating up a spreading piece of cloth.

"What are you making, mother?" Kitty asked. "New blinds for Mr. Kerry's
bedroom-he likes this green colour," the widow added with a slight
flush, due to leaning over the sewing-machine, no doubt.

"Everybody does everything for him," remarked the girl almost pettishly.

"That's a nice spirit, I must say!" replied her mother reprovingly, the
machine almost stopping.

"If I said it in a different way it would be all right," the other
returned with a smile, and she repeated the words with a winning soft
inflection, like a born actress.

"Kitty-Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!" declared her mother, and she
bent smiling over the machine, which presently buzzed on its devouring
way. Three people had said the same thing within a few minutes. A look
of pleasure stole over the girl's face, and her bosom rose