face it is this time maybe
one little schildt. He carry them in his eyes, the little
schildren, unt he is coming home, unt he say nudding; he cannot
eat, unt zo I know vot iss it."

Although this announcement went to Miss Eastman's heart, it was
not sufficient to outweigh her resolution. She would speak
plainly to him. Glancing toward the office, she saw that a dim
light was shining from an open door into the hallway.

"I think I shall have to go in," she said to Mrs. Botz, and
started for the office.

Miss Eastman's determination was firmly fixed. Dr. Redfield must
understand once for all that hers was the exclusive guardianship
over David, and with that unwavering idea in her mind she looked
into the room. She saw him seated under the shade of the lamp in
his faded green house-robe, his shoulders more stooped than
formerly, his shaggy head sunk forward, and a greater weariness
in his face than she had ever seen in it before.

All at once, as she stood looking at him, her grievances dwindled
into pettiness. The words she had come to speak were dumb upon
her lips, forgotten in a womanly impulse to go to him, to put her
arms about that tired head, and to hold it as though he were
nothing more than a little boy. So, presently, when he glanced
up, it did not seem at all strange that she should be asking:--

"How is it down there? Very bad?"

One would have thought she had accused him of surrender. He
turned upon her with fierce irritability.

"Who says we're not getting on?" he demanded. "Who says--who says
nothing can do any good?"

He grasped the sides of the chair and struggled to his feet. He
stood erect like a general, his eyes suddenly lighting up with
the fire of inflexible will. Then he was seized with a trembling
fit, and sank back in his chair. He rubbed his hands over his
gray face; he clenched his fingers, and the knuckle of his thumb
went to his eye and got wet in doing it. And it was all so
awkward, and so boyish, and so funny, this movement of his fist
and the tear-drop on his thumb, that Miss Eastman would have
laughed if she had not been crying.

"Who was it, Doctor--who was it that died to-day?"

He told her who it was, and she could not believe him.

"Jim Lehman's child? Not Emma--surely not little Emma Lehman? How
is that possible? Such a very short time ago it seems since I was
lending her story-books! She couldn't speak English at all when
she first came to school."

"You knew her,