haven't I? But you're so clever, Peter, that I expected you
to see through me."

"I trusted you!" he mourned.

"Oh, Peter! Peter! That's the way a man always seeks to excuse his
stupidity when a woman gets the best of him! But you can trust my
sincerity now. And you can sympathize with me if Sheila's _not_ a
poet. You seem to doubt her being one!"

"She isn't a poet--yet. She may become one. I can't tell about that.
What I am sure of is that she has a remarkable mind--as I told you long
ago. She has things to express, and evidently the time has come when
she wants to express them. That's the hopeful point."

"Then she is promising--for all your laughter?"

"Indeed she is! These poems are funny--but every now and then there's
a flash of light through them. Mrs. Caldwell, I believe in the
_light_. I don't know what Sheila will do with it, but it's there--and
it's wonderful!"

The tears were in Mrs. Caldwell's eyes again, not the bright tears of
anger, but the soft mist that rises from a heart profoundly moved. As
Peter spoke, the drops overflowed and rolled slowly down her cheeks,
but she was unconscious of them. "You don't know what this means to
me!" she said.

"I didn't know you would feel like this about it. You deceived me so
thoroughly! But now I wonder why I didn't realize, in spite of all
your protestations, that you'd care just this deeply. I should have
understood what things of the mind are to you--you were my
grandfather's friend!"

"Yes, I was your grandfather's friend. And he was a marvellous man,
Peter. It's the proudest thing I can say of myself--that I was his
friend." Then, quickly, as if she had closed a treasure box, she
turned from the subject of her old friendship--which Peter knew might
have been more--to that of Sheila.

"What shall I do with my poet, Peter? I'm as much afraid of her as I
said I should be--and as unfit to help her."

"Let me help her! Will you let me train her?"

"Oh, my dear, I hoped you'd ask to do it!"

"Then it's a bargain--not only for the present, but for the
future--after she graduates--as long as she needs me?"

Mrs. Caldwell flashed a keen glance at him: "As long as you will,
Peter! I'll trust her to you gratefully."

But if there was any deeper significance in her words than her
acceptance of the present compact, Peter failed to catch it. As he
stood in the seminary doorway a few moments later, watching Mrs.
Caldwell's retreati