r, he went on, "There's a good deal of
that around here, isn't there? Tell me something about Mr. Radbourne.
You've been here some time, I believe."

"Two years. He's the best and kindest--"

She entered, eager to cover up her late awkwardness, upon a glowing
history of their employer's multifarious kindness. There was Miss
Brown, the stenographer, rescued from the department store where she
had been "dying on her feet," sent to a commercial school and given a
position she never could fill. And Blake, the collector, who had lung
trouble and half the time was not able to report for duty. And Hegner,
who was a genius but had a burning palate, picked up almost from the
gutter and given an important place in the shop in the hope that
responsibility would restore the shattered will. And Smith, the latest
recruit, but recently out of the penitentiary.

"Though I wish he hadn't taken _him_ in. He looks bad and has fishy
eyes and is always so surly."

"Is this a business or a sort of hospital for broken lives?" David
inquired.

"I think in his heart Mr. Radbourne is more interested in the hospital."

"It's too bad he's so homely, isn't it? It's rather hard to take him
very seriously."

"Yes." She sighed, then caught herself up loyally. "_No_! Because
when you get to know him you don't think about his face at all."

David was thinking he had not done full justice to her face. It was
spirited and really intelligent, he decided, though its prettiness was
as yet open to question. He perceived what hitherto he had missed:
that she had hair and eyes quite worthy of consideration. Black as
night the former was, and fine and rebellious, with little curling
wisps about her ears and neck. The eyes were a peculiar slaty gray and
had depths inviting inspection. He found himself wishing he could see
them really alight.

"It would be something," he said thoughtfully, going back to Jonathan,
"to be able to run that sort of hospital. But what a crew of lame
ducks we are! Except you, of course!"

She laughed. "Oh, you needn't be polite. I'm one, too. Not a very
big one or very tragic. A lame duckling, shall we say?"

He suggested that a lame duckling might grow up into a wonderful swan,
and munched his apple ruminatively. Neither happened to think of a
certain incident, much discussed, in which that edible figured
prominently. And he did not ask a question.

"But how does he get his work done, with such a