everything before
we let our Mark go!" Later, when the children had been dismissed, and
he himself was going, rather stiffly, toward the stairs, Mr. Paget
again voiced a mild doubt.

"There was a perfectly good reason for her hurry, I suppose? Old
secretary deserted--got married--? She had good reason for wanting
Mark in all this hurry?"

Mrs. Paget and her daughters had settled about the fire for an hour's
delicious discussion, but she interrupted it to say soothingly, "It
was her cousin, Dad, who's going to be married, and she's been trying
to get hold of just the right person--she says she's fearfully
behindhand--"

"Well, you know best," said Mr. Paget, departing a little
discontentedly.

Left to the dying fire, the others talked, yawned, made a pretence of
breaking up: talked and yawned again. The room grew chilly. Bruce,--oldest
of the children,--dark, undemonstrative, weary,--presently came
in, and was given the news, and marvelled in his turn. Bruce and
Margaret had talked of their ambitions a hundred times: of the day
when he might enter college and when she might find the leisure and
beauty in life for which her soul hungered. Now, as he sat with his
arm about her, and her head on his shoulder, he said with generous
satisfaction over and over:--

"It was coming to you, Mark; you've earned it!"

At midnight, loitering upstairs, cold and yawning, Margaret kissed her
mother and brother quietly, with whispered brief good-nights. But
Julie, lying warm and snug in bed half-an-hour later, had a last word.

"You know, Mark, I think I'm as happy as you are--no, I'm not generous
at all! It's just that it makes me feel that things do come your way
finally, if you wait long enough, and that we aren't the only family
in town that never has anything decent happen to it!... I'll miss you
awfully, Mark, darling!... Mark, do you suppose Mother'd let me take
this bed out, and just have a big couch in here? It would make the
room seem so much bigger. And then I could have the girls come up
here, don't you know--when they came over.... Think of you--you--going
abroad! I'd simply die! I can't wait to tell Betty!... I hope to
goodness Mother won't put Beck in here!... We've had this room a long
time together, haven't we? Ever since Grandma died. Do you remember
her canary, that Teddy hit with a plate?... I'm going to miss you
terribly, Mark. But we'll write...."

CHAPTER III

On the days that followed, the miracle