gling upward into
her face. So Cally rose hurriedly, her hand withdrawn, and moved away.
But she did her best, for her pride's sake, to envelop her movement
with a matter-of-fact air; and when she had got about four steps away
from him, she remarked, quite distinctly:

"Don't get up.... I ... want to get something."

And she did, in fact, go on to mamma's desk and attentively select three
more sheets of note-paper, which would no doubt come in handy for
something or other some day.

And out of the stillness behind her came Mr. V.V.'s voice, just a little
husky now:

"No one ever did anything so sweet to me before."

But that only made things worse, turning a white light, as it were, on
thoughts she had had before now of the loneliness of his life. So she,
finding herself not strong enough to be a comforter after all, said in a
resolute kind of way:

"I never like to hear my friends depreciated. So please don't do it any
more.... What was the name of that book about factories--the one you
said that Mr. Pond had?"

Silence behind her, and then: "'The New Factory Idea,' by T.B. Halton."

She noted this information carefully on one of her sheets of paper, thus
proving that she was right to go and get them, all the time.

"I thought," said she, "I might see if Saltman had it. Then I could
begin to cram to-night."

But no, he said that Saltman hadn't it, but would order it, of course.
And then the scraping of a chair-leg advised all listeners that Mr. V.V.
was violating that injunction laid upon him as to not getting up....

He advanced round the table-end, his hand raised in his nervous and
characteristic gesture. So anyone who wished could see that deficiency
at his elbow, about which he himself seemed so splendidly indifferent.
He was as tall as Hugo; but Hugo, with his lordly good looks and
beautiful clothes, was certainly a much more eye-catching figure. And
yet, as she straightened now and looked, the knowledge shot suddenly
through Cally that this doctor in his patches somehow looked, that he
had always looked, rather the finer gentleman of the two....

"Johnson's the publisher," said V.V., coming to a halt in front of her.
And then, taking the sheets of note-paper unconsciously from her
unresisting hands, he added, looking down:

"But--how'd you mean just now ... that I--I've accomplished so--so
much?"

By now Cally could smile, in quite a natural-seeming way; and this she
did, full under the prophet