e camels and missionaries and a few brown babies and two white hens."

He had not meant to talk in this grieving, childish fashion. But
something about her brought his heart thoughts to his lips. And to-day
he found no pleasure in looking down on the village roofs where Joe
Tumley lay sick and miserable and Mary, his wife, wept and men and
women talked and argued as he very well knew they were talking and
arguing.

"What! No playmates? No boy friends--not even a dog?" Nan grieved
with him.

"Oh, I had an Irish soldier's boy for two months once and a little
brown dog for a week. Mother was always afraid of disease."

He could hardly believe that remembrance of these long-past things was
in him. Yet he was suddenly remembering many old, old matters and with
it came back the old, childish pain.

She sat down on the oak stump quite near him and there was more than
pity in her eyes, only he did not see.

"Why," she advised gently, "you must have a dog at once. I can give
you a wonderful collie and then on gray days you can bring him up here
to your hill top or go tramping through woods and ravines with him. A
dog is the finest kind of company for a gray day. And there is your
attic. Why, I always spend hours in my attic these still, gentle days.
I go up there to read old letters and look over old boxes full of queer
keepsakes. I sit in a three-legged chair and sometimes, if I find an
old coverless book and if the rain begins to drum softly on the
shingles, I go to sleep on an ancient sagging sofa and dream great
dreams. Haven't you ransacked that attic of yours yet?" she wanted to
know.

"No. And the housekeeper insists on my doing it soon. Says that if
I'm going to give Jimmy Trumbull that party I promised him I'd better
have the barn and the attic all fixed up for it, because the boys
wouldn't have any fun in the house and the house wouldn't stand it any
better."

And then because neither one of them could think of anything else to
say they were perfectly still there on the hill top. There seemed to
be no need for speech. Nanny looked down at the little town and
Cynthia's son lay contentedly at her feet, looking at her and rustling
the dead leaves with an idle hand.

It might have become dangerous, that contented silence. For Nan at
least was thinking. She was thinking how often she came to the hill
top to visit with this man at her feet and how seldom he came to her
door to visit with her. W