thought, a memory or a possession of which she was not fully informed.

But this last year Hen had become secretive, openly rebellious,
strangely despondent, with now and then flashes of a very real and
unpleasant temper. Agnes, baffled, curious, hurt, angry and afraid,
had at last taken her burden to the boyish minister and then went in
trembling triumph to Hen and told him what she had done.

"Yes," Hen told her quietly, "I know. He was in here when you went to
the drug store and told me. He advised me to open that drawer and let
you see what's in it. And I'll do it to please him. But I won't open
it myself and he's the only one I'll let do it. So just you send for
him. As long as you told him, I want him to see there's nothing in
that drawer that I need to be ashamed of."

At this point in the story Cynthia's son paused and looked so long at
the sun-splashed village roofs that.

Nan stirred impatiently.

"Well--what was it that Hen was guarding so carefully from Agnes?" she
wanted to know.

"Oh--just odds and ends--mostly trifles. There was a dance programme,
a black kid glove of his wife's, some letters from a chum that's dead,
an old knife his grandfather once gave him when he was a boy, the last
knit necktie his mother had made him and a box of toys, beautiful,
hand-carved toys.

"It seems that the Tomlinses had a baby a long time ago and all the
time they were expecting it Hen was carving it these beautiful toys.
It was a boy and, lived to be a year old, just old enough to begin to
play with things. Then it died. And nobody, it seems, knew how Hen
missed that baby, not even his wife. But he had kept that box of toys
in his tool shed all those years and in the last year had put it in the
drawer with a few other treasures which he had had hidden in odd
crannies without anybody suspecting. It was all he had, he said, that
was his very own. And he showed me the handle of the little hammer
where the baby's playing hands had soiled it."

It seems that Hen explained the other things too. The dance programme
he saved because that was where he first knew that his wife cared about
him. She had selected him for the lady's choice number. The other
things Hen kept because they were given to him by people who had all
sincerely liked him.

"You see," Hen had said, "nobody knows how hard it is to be a little
man. Nobody respects you. Your folks always apologize and try to
explain your size or tell y