ister turned and went toward his horse without a word.

The horse walked a good part of the way to Farleigh, and Mr. Langley was amazed to find how late it was when he got home. He was too deep in thought to realize how much time he had spent on the way. Now he was full of pity for the daughter of that sort of a man. With the home influence she had had, he wondered that the girl wasn't much more disagreeable than report made her.

Later in the week he called at the Mudges', arriving about the time school was over for the day, in order to see Mabel. She came in promptly and was very ready to talk with the minister about school, but, like her father, she wanted only to sing her own praises. Mr. Langley had never encountered a young person whose real self was so hard to get at, or perhaps to believe in. If he once got her away from her own prodigious feats of scholarship, it was only that she might say nasty things about the others. And her face was so stolid and almost vacant, her remarks so smug, that it was difficult to meet her. She hadn't even a good word for her teachers; but as she made no direct statements, it would only have made things worse if he had taken her vague insinuations amiss.

In leaving, he seemed to himself to act the clergyman of the old school-readers. He hoped Mabel

would continue to enjoy her school; that she would pursue her studies as something to carry with her into life, and strive after and cherish friendly relations with her schoolmates. Mabel listened politely but apparently quite unimpressed, and he went away truly discouraged.

Before he left the Hollow he decided to drop into Miss Penny's on the chance of seeing Rusty. He wasn't exactly sure of what he wanted of the girl. But he had a vague idea of telling her how bleak and unwholesome Mabel's surroundings had been always, and enlisting her sympathy and thereby her aid in getting at the girl's better self.

But Rusty had been called home suddenly, and when he learned the cause he didn't see fit to burden her further. And he went home with his heart still heavier because of her trouble.

Ο

CHAPTER XVI

N the Thursday of the first week, after the Easter holidays, Seth Miller had suddenly given up his work at the shop. He appeared at home earlier than his wont with the announcement that he wasn't going to work in that hole another day. If he could get work at his own proper trade, well and good; if not he just wouldn't do anything. Mrs. Miller cried the greater part of the night. Next morning she sent word to Rusty by a schoolmate asking her to come home as soon as she could, and Rusty went directly from school prepared to stay until Monday. At the door her mother explained the situation in doleful whispers.

Her father had had no carpenter work for weeks and weeks; and Rusty had realized how his spirits had begun to fail as he stuck to the work that was now worse drudgery than ever. And now her warm heart went out to him as she saw him sitting in the window of the front room dressed in his best clothes, his arms folded, a solemn and rather absurd frown upon his pleasant face. Running to him the girl threw her arms about his neck.

"Poor old pa!" she cried, "I heard you were

home and so I came too to keep you company. Don't you feel well?"

"I don't know how I do feel, Rusty," he said half crossly, half appealingly, for he was touched by her sympathy. "I'm clear discouraged, that's all there is to it."

"I'm sure I don't wonder, pa, it must be simply awful after building all those things out of that clean, sweet-smelling wood to be shut up in that dark, dirty shop all this while," cried Rusty, perching on the arm of his chair. "And yet, you did say only last week that you thought you'd best stick to it till something better offered."

He sighed.

"I guess that was along of your being here, Rusty. Seeing you every night, the days didn't seem so long. Anyhow, this week they seemed more'n double as long."

Unable to speak, Rusty stroked his hair. He saw tears in her eyes and was melted the more.

"You're the only girl I got," he murmured, "Anna running away as she did."

"Would you go back to work"-on a sudden Rusty was very white "would you, pa, if I came home and stayed?"

"Oh, Rusty, I wouldn't have you lose your chance for an education for all the world," he cried warmly. "I know what I'll do," she exclaimed. "I'll come

home every Friday night soon as ever school is done and won't go back till Monday morning. Then I'll be here almost half the week. How would that suit red-headed Rusty's only pa?"

"Oh, Rusty, you wouldn't do that for me!" he cried. "And I hadn't ought to let you, child. Everything's so fine and comfortable to Miss Penny's I ought not to let you miss so much of it. No, no, but I'll go back to the shop anyway. I don't feel as if I could go to-morrow, but I'll start in Monday."

"And I'll start in doing this way right now, pa,' she cried. "We'll have it all fine and comfortable here, too, and I'll come home and be here every Friday when you come from work. Honestly, I'd love to do it. And now I'll go tell ma and make a johnny-cake for supper."

Miller went back to the shop next morning and didn't miss a day thereafter. Neither did Rusty let anything interfere with her spending the week-end at home, though it was a constant sacrifice. Cheered by the certainty of having his girl almost half the week, Miller pegged away manfully on the odd days. And a measure of the cheerfulness that had come to him with the resumption of his work at his own trade returned to encourage his wife.

It was only Reuben who had the matter constantly on his mind.