ing at the delicious morsel, while her hostess rapidly wrote out a
little formula and gave it to her with a smile.

They were soon off after that, for the early winter twilight was upon
them, and the lights in the waiting car outside suddenly came on with a
suggestive completeness. Georgiana assisted her guests into luxurious
coats and capes made of or lined with chinchilla, with otter, with
sable; handed gloves and muffs; and listened to all manner of
affectionate parting speeches, every one of which contained pressing
invitations for visits, short or long. Each girl made promises of future
calls, and professed herself eager to come and stay with Georgiana at
any time. Then the whole group went away on a little warm breeze of
good-fellowship and human kindness.

"They are dears," admitted Georgiana, as she waved her arm at the
departing car; "but, oh!--_oh!_ I can't stand having them sorry for me!
The old manse _is_ shabby, and every girl of them knew how many times
this frock has been made over--I saw Celia recognize it even through its
dye. No wonder, when it's been at every college tea she ever gave. But I
won't--_I won't_--be pitied!"

The door opened, and a slender figure in an old-fashioned dressing-gown
came slowly into the firelit room.

Georgiana turned quickly. "Father Davy! Do you feel better? If I'd known
it, I'd have brought you in to meet the girls. They would have enjoyed
you so."

"I'm not quite up to meeting the girls perhaps, daughter, but decidedly
better and correspondingly cheerful. Have you had a good time?"

He placed himself as carefully as possible upon the couch by the fire,
and his daughter tucked him up in an old plaid shawl which had lain
folded upon it. She dropped upon the hearthrug and sat looking into the
fire, while her father regarded the picture she made in the dyed frock,
now a soft Indian red, a hue which pleased his eye and brought out all
her gypsy colouring.

The head upon the couch pillow was topped with a soft mass of curly gray
hair, the face below was thin and pale, but the eyes which rested upon
the girl were the clearest, youngest blue-gray eyes that ever spoke
mutely of the spirit's triumph over the body. One had but to glance at
David Warne to understand that here was a man who was no less a man
because he had to spend many hours of every day upon his tortured back.
It was three years since he had been forced to lay aside the care of the
village-and-country paris