Ann Boyd’s features were working, a soft flush had come into her tanned cheeks, her hard mouth had become more flexible. "I’ve thought of that ten thousand times," she said, huskily, "but I have never seen the time I could quite come down to it. Mary, it’s a sort of pride that I never can overcome. I feel peculiar about Net—about the girl, anyway. It seems to me like she died away back there in her baby-clothes, with her playthings—her big rag-doll and tin kitchen—and that I almost hate the strange, grown-up person she’s become away off from me. As God is my Judge, Mary Waycroft, I believe I could meet her face to face and not feel—feel like she was any near kin of mine, I can’t see no reason in this way of feeling. I know she had nothing to do with what took place, but she represents Joe Boyd’s part of the thing, and she’s lost her place in my heart. If she could have grown up here with me it would have been different, but—" Ann went no further. She stood looking over the landscape, her hand clutching her strong chin. There was an awkward silence. Some of Ann’s chickens came up to her very skirt, chirping and springing open-mouthed to her kindly hand for food. She gently and absent-mindedly waved her apron up and down and drove them away. "I understand all that," said Mrs. Waycroft; "but I believe you feel that way just because you’ve got in the habit of it. I really believe you ought to let me"—the speaker caught her breath—"ought to just let me tell Nettie, when I see her, about what I know you to be at heart, away down under what the outside world thinks. And you ought to let me say that if her young heart yearns for anything her pa can’t afford to buy, that I know you’d be glad, out of your bounty, to give it to her. I really believe it would open the girl’s eyes and heart to you. I believe she’d not only accept your aid, but she’d be plumb happy over it, as any other girl in the same fix would be." "Do you think that, Mary? Do you think she’d take anything—a single thing from my hands?" "I do, Ann, as the Lord is my Creator, I do; any natural girl would be only too glad. Young women hungering for nice things to put on along with other girls ain’t as particular as some hide-bound old people. Then I’ll bet she didn’t know what it was all about, anyway."