ks like you
can't kill no Deaneville child with mushrooms. He's asleep now. But
say, he was a pretty sick kid! Doc' looks like something the cat
brought home, and I'm about dead, but Danny seems to feel real chipper.
And EAT! And of course that poor girl looks like she'd inherited the
earth, as the Scriptures say. The ice is what you might call broken
between the whole crowd of us and Shandon Waters. She's sitting there
holding Danny and smiling softly at any one who peeks in!" And, her
voice thickening suddenly with tears on the last words, Mrs. Larabee
burst out crying and fumbled in her unaccustomed grandeur for a
handkerchief.

Mary Dickey and Arnold Lowell were married just twenty-four hours later
than they had planned, the guests laughing joyously at the wilted
decorations and stale sandwiches. After the ceremony the bride and
bridegroom went softly up stairs, and the doctor had a last approving
look at the convalescent Danny.

Mary, almost oppressed by the sense of her own blessedness on this day
of good wishes and affectionate demonstration, would have gently
detached her husband's arm from her waist as they went to the door,
that Shandon might not be reminded of her own loss and aloneness.

But the doctor, glancing back, knew that in Shandon's thoughts to-day
there was no room for sorrow. Her whole body was curved about the child
as he lay in her lap, and her adoring look was intent upon him. Danny
was smiling up at his mother in a blissful interval, his soft little
hand lying upon her contented heart.

GAYLEY THE TROUBADOUR

Through the tremulous beauty of the California woods, in the silent
April afternoon, came Sammy Peneyre, riding Clown. The horse chose his
own way on the corduroy road, for the rider was lost in dreams. Clown
was a lean old dapple gray so far advanced in years and ailments that
when Doctor Peneyre had bought him, the year before, the dealer had
felt constrained to remark:

"He's better'n he looks, Doc'. You'll get your seven dollars' worth out
of him yet!"

To which the doctor had amiably responded:

"Your saying so makes me wonder if I WILL, Joe. However, I'll have my
boy groom him and feed him, and we'll see!"

But, as Clown had stubbornly refused to respond to grooming and
feeding, he was, like other despised and discarded articles, voted by
the Peneyre family quite good enough for Sammy, and Sammy accepted him
gratefully.

The spirit of spring was affecting them b