Herself a contained person of radiant health and placid nerves, she had an almost masculine aversion to scenes and tears, to applied emotion of every sort, and yet, perhaps by the very reason of her abundant vitality, her compelling and vehement charm, she was often involved in them. People came to her, confided in her, leaned upon her. She seemed so far removed from tragedy that those plunged deep in it turned to her as to a natural antidote. She never went consciously about doing good, yet she was

certain to be found in the thick of any grief or catastrophe within her knowledge. Possibly these unhappy ones had a dim, subconscious feeling that they were only evening things up; that one basking so prettily in her undoubted place in the sun could very well afford a brief detour into the shadow. It had been said of Jane Vail that she demonstrated somebody's theory that one genuinely happy person in a house was worth three who were trying to make others happy. Today, however, she was going deliberately into the heart of a misery that did not in the least concern her, and where, furthermore, she was quite sure she would be unwelcome. Once she stood still in the street, deliberating as to whether or not she had better turn back; but with this quandary came the thought of how earnestly Michael Daragh had begged her to come, and she set off again at a pace that brought a deeper glow to her warm

cheeks. Buttoned to the chin in a cloak the color of old red wine, a jubilant crimson wing in her small fur hat, she made a welcome note in the dull street as she threaded her way through its somber woof.

Michael Daragh was waiting for her at the next corner. He was a tall young Irishman with a jaw of a fighter and a zealot's eyes, and Jane had promptly put him down in her mental cast of characters as a large body of men entirely surrounded by conscience.

"I suspect you of suspecting me of not coming," she said as he fell into step beside her.

"I thought I would be showing you the way," he replied gravely.

"And meanwhile you can tell me the situation again, please. It 's dreadfully vague in my mind, and it 's vaguely dreadful to think what you want me to do." She was well enough aware of the circumstances, but she never lost a chance of hearing his purling brogue, his quaint construction, with its ever-present present participle, and she liked to watch him while he spoke. He looked, she thought again, as if Botticelli might have painted him, but he talked as if he 'd been written by Synge.

"Why, you see," he said patiently, "Ethel 's been living on at the home ever since her baby was born. It'll be two now, and Ethel 's going for eighteen. Doing finely she is at the same shop as her sister, steady and sweet as you'd wish to see. Well, one day she tells the matron she has a sweetheart.

"Fine!' says Mrs. Richards. 'What were we always telling you? And will he be good to the baby?'

"He does n't know I 've the baby,' says Ethel, and what's more, he never shall.'

""And you'll be wedding him with the secret on your soul, and giving up your child?' says the matron.

""I will that,' says the girl, and all the king's horses and all the king's men can't move her." He stooped to set a weeping baby on its feet, handing it over

with a smile to a big little brother cumbered with much serving.

"It'll be the sister's doing, she the hard, managing sort, and Ethel the soft slip of a thing. Coming to-day she is to carry it off to the place she 's found for it-some distant kin down Boston way who 've been wanting to adopt. They don't know, of course."

"But does n't Ethel love her child?" "There's the heart-scald to it-the

light of her eyes. But Irene, d' you see, has scared her into making sure she 'll lose him if she tells." He sighed. "Wait till you see the look of her. 'Eating worry pudding with the sauce o' tears,' they would be saying of her home in Wicklow."

Jane echoed his sigh.

"I'll try, Michael Daragh. Do you mind my calling you by your two names at once? I like them so. They make me think of the black line of the McGillicuddy Reeks against the sky, and the wind off the three lakes on the road to Kenmare."

His eyes lighted.

"It 's good indeed to have you know Ireland. Whiles, I 'm destroyed with the homesickness. There's the house."

"Of course; I could have picked it out of the whole street, it has such a smug and dreary look of doing good. Look at the liver-colored glass in the door, and 'Welcome' on the mat. O Michael Daragh, how can they?"

A somber-faced girl of fifteen in a coarse, enveloping pinafore opened the door. Her hands and arms were red and dripping, and from a dim region at the rear came the smell of dish-water. Down the old-fashioned, precipitate stairway floated a thin, protesting wail. Jane felt her heart contract.

"Thank you, Lena," said Michael. "This is a good friend who has come to see us."

The girl gave Jane a stolid, incurious look and shuffled back to her work, banging the door noisily behind her.

The matron's grim face bore evidence of a troubled spirit.

"Well," she said doubtfully, "you 're very kind, I 'm sure; but I 'm afraid it 's no use. I've just been trying to talk to her, but she 's turned sullen now. And Irene's coming for the baby this afternoon." She sat down again, wearily, at a table cluttered with perfunctory preparations for Christmas. In the bleak realities in which she lived and worked the tinsel glitter of the holiday season stung her into irritability. "I declare, Mr. Daragh, I've about made up my mind we'd better tell him. She 's to be married Monday. I believe it 's our duty."

"It's not our right," said Michael, sternly.

Jane glanced up at him quickly. He stood in a shaft of pale winter sunshine, and it brought out the austerity of his face, the rather relentless line of his strong jaw. Once more he reminded her of her favorite picture of his namesake. She followed him up-stairs and paused outside the door he indicated.

"She'll be here feeding Billikin."

She lifted a look of girded resolve to him and knocked quickly. At a low response she entered, closed the door behind her, and stood looking at the picture across the drab, unlovely room. A fat, gurgling baby sat in a tiny red chair, mutinously pushing away the bread and milk the girl was urging.

"Please, Billikin!" she was saying. "Eat for muddie! Billikin, it's the last chance muddie 'll ever have to feed you! Take it quick, or I'll give it to the kitty-cat! Come, kitty, kitty!" She looked up at the sound of the door. Even with Michael's "going for eighteen" fresh in her ears, Jane was aghast at her youth. She looked much less than her years in her childish blouse, her fair hair mussed and hanging about her face. She was very white, and her eyelids were heavy and swollen.

"Are you Ethel?" Jane came nearer, smiling at the child.

"Yes," said the girl, eying her defensively. She began to tidy her hair with hands that trembled. On the left Jane glimpsed a tiny, pin-head solitaire.

"I am Michael Daragh's friend. He asked me to talk to you."

"Oh, my God!" Red, angry spots flamed into her white cheeks, and she struck her hands together. "Can't they leave me alone? I told 'em I would n't talk any more. I told 'em." She scrambled to her feet and went to the meager dresser, where she stood patting and pulling at her hair, her back to Jane.

It seemed to Jane that her feet must of their own volition carry her out of the tragic room and the gloomy house and the dull street, away and away, back to the gentle world she knew; but she resolutely crossed the room, and sat down on the floor beside the little red chair. "Why do you call her Billikin?”

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'Cause she was always grinning from the time she was a teenty baby." She turned with a long, rebellious stare. “You don't look like a nurse or a settlementworker or anything."

"I'm not; but when Michael Daragh told me about you, I had to come and talk with you."

Ethel averted her face again.

"I guess you mean all right, but it 's no use. I told Mrs. Richards that, and I told Mr. Daragh. They 've kept at me and kept at me- Jane could see her face in the cracked mirror working hysterically.

"Din-din!" Billikin beat with her spoon upon the tray of her chair and shrilled in imperative command. "Muddie! Dindin!"

Jane leaned forward.

"Oh, I'd love to feed her! May I?"

"No!" Ethel swooped down before her, jealously snatching up the bowl. "Not when it 's my last chance!" She leveled a spoonful and held it up to the dimpling child. "Billikin, come, eat for muddie! Gobble-gobble! Eat for-" Her voice broke, and she held her head down to hide her eyes.

"Oh," said Jane, softly, "how can you let her go?"

"Do you s'pose I want to?" She flung it out savagely.

Jane patted Billikin's little fat hand.

"Then-why do you?"

The girl's face flamed suddenly, but she turned defiantly to her inquisitor.

"Jerry, that 's why. I can-I could have other babies, but I could n't ever have another Jerry. Now you know."

"I know how fine he must be to make you care like that," Jane answered gently. "Tell me about him, won't you?"

Ethel looked into

the other girl's glowing face, and the tense lines in her own eased a little.

"Well," she began, "he 's not good-looking butbut he looks good." Jane nodded gravely and understandingly.

"Handsome men

"That is not what frightens me, Ethel." Jane looked down at the fair head beside Billikin's riotous curls, and paused uncertainly. How could she appeal to a sense of fair play, to a clear and high ideal of honesty, to a stern and stainless truth, in a life so gro

-you can't trust 'em." A look of wintry reminiscence came into her blue eyes for an instant, and faded away again. "I think more of Jerry than anybody. I don't remember my folks. My sister-well, she meant all right; it was n't her fault, onlyshe was so awful' proper, always. I never knew anything-till I knew everything." She twisted her hands together in her lap, brooding a moment in bitter silence. "But Jerry!" Her heavy eyes lighted, and her young mouth fell into soft curves. "Jerry's different from anything I ever thought a man could be. He's almost like a girl, some ways. You know-just as nice to talk to and to be with." She kept her gaze on Jane's warm and comprehending eyes. "And he 's smart, too. The firm wants to send him to Rochester and put him in charge of the gents' furnishings. I think maybe I'd like to live there; I would n't ever meet anybody that knew. He don't even know where I live. The matron says he 'll surely find out some time and hate me, but he won't find out. Nobody knows but Irene and the folks here."

"I mean-Jerry." "Oh!"

crazy to have her. 'A blue-eyed girl with curly hair,' they says to Irene. They think her mother's dead."

"I was n't thinking of Billikin.”

"Who?" Ethel asked curiously, a little wary hint of fear in her gaze.

"Yes. Tell him to-day, now, as soon as you go back!"

"It 's too late. Irene 's coming to-day to take her to Boston. It's all settled. It 's too late now, even if I wanted to. Besides," she began to dab at her eyes with a small, damp wad of handkerchief,-"I could n't tell him in the daytime, right there in the store!"

"Oh, where and when can't matter!"

"I could n't in the daytime," she stubbornly shook her head. "I nearly told him last night. I meant to; 'cross my heart, I did. We went for a walk, and I was just-just sort of beginning, when a woman came by-and said something to him. He said, 'Poor devil!' That 's what he called her 'Poor devil!' Just like that he said it." She covered her face with her hands and began to sob chokingly. A watery gleam of sunshine fell on the pitiful solitaire.

Billikin leaned forward, her fat little