reached
South Harvey. He left her at the door of her kindergarten, and a group
of young girls, waiting for her, surrounded her.

When he reached his office, he found Violet Hogan working at her desk.

"You'll find all your mail opened, and I've noted the things that have
been attended to," she said, as she turned to him. "I'm due over to the
girls' class with Miss Laura--I'm helping her to-night with her picnic."

Grant nodded, and fell to his work. Violet went on:

"The letters for your signature are here on my desk. Money seems to be
coming in. New local showing up down in Magnus--from the tile works."
She rose, put on her coat and hat, and said as she stood in the door,
"To-morrow will be your day in--won't it?" He nodded at his work, and
she called out, "Well,--bye, bye--I'll be in about noon."

Daylight faded and he turned on the electric above his desk and was
going over his work, making notations on letters for Violet, when he
heard a footstep on the stairs. He recognized the familiar step of Henry
Fenn.

"Come in--come in, Henry," cried Grant.

Fenn appeared, saw Grant at his work, slipped into a chair, and said:

"Now go right on--don't mind me, young man." Fenn pulled a newspaper
from his cheap neat coat, and sat reading it, under a light that he made
for himself at Violet's desk. The light fell on his thin whitening
hair--still coarse, and close cropped. In his clean, washed-out face
there was the faded glow of the man who had been the rising young
attorney thirty years before. Grant knew that Fenn did not expect the
work to stop, so he went on with it. "I'm going to supper about eight
o'clock," said Grant, and asked: "Will that be all right?"

"Don't mind me," returned Fenn, and smiled with a dim reflection of the
old incandescence of his youth.

Fenn's hands trembled a little, but his eyes were steady and his voice
clear. His clothes were shabby but decent, and his whole appearance was
that of one who is making it a point to keep up. When Grant had finished
his correspondence, and was sealing up his letters, Fenn lent a hand and
began:

"Well, Grant, I'm in trouble--Oh, it's not that," he laughed as Grant
looked quickly into the clean, alert old face. "That's not bothered me
for--Oh, for two years now. But it's Violet--she wants me to marry her."
He blurted it out as if it had been pent in, and was hard to hold.

"Why--well--what makes you--well, has she proposed, Henry?" asked the
younger man