r. Brotherton come in, Laura?"

"Oh, mother, he's always been a kind of god-father to those girls. You
know as well as I that Emma's been playing with that funeral choir of
yours and Mr. Brotherton's all these years, only because he got her into
it, and Grant says he's kept Mrs. Herdicker from discharging Martha for
two years, just by sheer nerve. Of course Grant gets it from Mr.
Brotherton but Grant says Martha is so pretty she's such a trial to Mrs.
Herdicker! I like Martha, but, mother, she just thinks she should be
carried round on a chip because of her brown eyes and red hair and dear
little snubby nose. Grant says Mr. Brotherton is trying to get the money
someway to float the Captain's stock company and put his Household Horse
on the market. I think Mr. Brotherton is a fine man, mother--he's always
doing things to help people."

Mrs. Nesbit folded up her work, and began to rise. "George Brotherton,
Laura," said her mother as she stood at full length looking down upon
her child, "has a voice of an angel, and perhaps the heart of a god, but
he will eat onions and during the twenty years I've been singing with
him I've never known him to speak a correct sentence. Common,
Laura--common as dishwater."

As Laura Van Dorn talked the currents of life eddying about her were
reflected in what she said. But she could not know the spirit that was
moving the currents; for with a neighborly shyness those who were
gathering about her were careful to seem casual in their kindness, and
she could not know how deeply they were moved to help her. Kindergartens
were hardly in George Brotherton's line; yet he untied old bundles of
papers, ransacked his shop and brought a great heap of old posters and
picture papers to her. Captain Morton brought a beloved picture of his
army Colonel to adorn the room, and deaf John Kollander, who had a low
opinion of the ignorant foreigners and the riff-raff and scum of
society, which Laura was trying to help, wished none the less to help
her, and came down one day with a flag for the schoolroom and insisted
upon making a speech to the tots about patriotism. He made nothing clear
to them but he made it quite clear to himself that they were getting the
flag as a charity, which they little deserved, and never would return.
And to Laura he conveyed the impression that he considered her mission a
madness, but for her and the sorrow which she was fighting, he had
appreciative tenderness. He must have impr