ithout a moment's delay.

So poor Hoyt brought them out and placed them in her hand, and then
ran for the water pitcher, and had to be at the bother of bathing her
forehead to keep her from fainting.

For what the lady saw was this: Over face and flowers and the head of
the coffin fell a thick veil, the edges of which touched the floor in
some places. It covered the features so well that not a hint of them was
visible.

"There was nothing over mother's face!" cried the lady at length.

"Not a thing," acquiesced Hoyt. "I know, because I had occasion to touch
her face just before I took the picture. I put some of her hair back
from her brow."

"What does it mean, then?" asked the lady.

"You know better than I. There is no explanation in science. Perhaps
there is some in--in psychology."

"Well," said the young woman, stammering a little and coloring, "mother
was a good woman, but she always wanted her own way, and she always had
it, too."

"Yes."

"And she never would have her picture taken. She didn't admire her own
appearance. She said no one should ever see a picture of her."

"So?" said Hoyt, meditatively. "Well, she's kept her word, hasn't she?"

The two stood looking at the photographs for a time. Then Hoyt pointed
to the open blaze in the grate.

"Throw them in," he commanded. "Don't let your father see them--don't
keep them yourself. They wouldn't be agreeable things to keep."

"That's true enough," admitted the lady. And she threw them in the fire.
Then Virgil Hoyt brought out the plates and broke them before her eyes.

And that was the end of it--except that Hoyt sometimes tells the story
to those who sit beside him when his pipe is lighted.

A CHILD OF THE RAIN

IT was the night that Mona Meeks, the dressmaker, told him she didn't
love him. He couldn't believe it at first, because he had so long been
accustomed to the idea that she did, and no matter how rough the weather
or how irascible the passengers, he felt a song in his heart as he
punched transfers, and rang his bell punch, and signalled the driver
when to let people off and on.

Now, suddenly, with no reason except a woman's, she had changed her
mind. He dropped in to see her at five o'clock, just before time for the
night shift, and to give her two red apples he had been saving for her.
She looked at the apples as if they were invisible and she could not see
them, and standing in her disorderly little dressmaking parlor, w