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soft word But as they got up frolanced at his watch,

and she winced; then sht; and he, looking at her with handso o and give a look at David," she said

"Look here, Nelly," he protested, "aren't you rather overdoing this

adopted-mother business?"

She found the child rather flushed and in an uneasy doze Instantly

she was anxious "Don't leave hi your dinner up to you Oh, I wish I didn't have to go

downstairs!"

"I'm afraid he is worse," she told Lloyd Pryor with a worried frown

"Well, don't look as if it were an affair of nations," he said

carelessly, and drew her down on the sofa beside hiot David; but she quivered for fear the

graciousness should cease She was like a thirsty creature, drinking

with eager haste, lest some terror should drive her back into the

desert But Lloyd Pryor continued to be gracious; he talked gayly of

this or that; he told her one or two stories that had been told hi or on a journey, and he roared with appreciation

of their peculiar huan tentatively to say so of Old Chester; and--and what

did he think? "That old man, who lives up on the hill, called, and--"