Falltime was well gone for the year. Yet in the rigors of winter a flower came to bloom in the heart of Dolores Trent. Petal-soft had opened the peace of her to-day. Warm-hued glowed the hope of to-morrow. As though none such ever had pricked her mind were the thorn-fears of yesterday. She first consciously viewed the miracle on a sharply bright afternoon when she and young Jack had crossed the Avenue for one of the strolls in Central Park which she was teaching him to enjoy. The fact that she had reached content glinted into her realization from off the sunlight. The green grass surviving the patches of snow, the birds darting hither and yon on their unaccountable errands, the branches swaying tractably to the breeze--each sight and sound about them accented the harmony with Nature of her changed mood. Hitherto, memories of her past had spoiled the present with dread of what the future might be. To-day the past was crowded into its proper position as the mere background of her life. So full of enjoyment was the present that she seemed almost--_almost_ to have reached the future. And her mental state seemed to have blessed her charge like a benediction. No longer did the cripple’s features twist into snarls at sight of more agile children at play. To his precocious mind had been submitted the law of compensation. Constantly reminding himself that there was meant to be no perfect earthly state, he compared nurse-maids and mothers unfavorably with his governess-pal; buttoned his coat thoughtfully when he passed a youngster in rags who could run; tilted his head farther to one side when a rheumy-eyed wreck of a father on a bench pointed the contrast with that of his god-man, his “John Cabot.” “It _is_ fun being happy,” he asserted gnomically. “It is--it is,” she agreed, with conviction equal to his own. “I think I have learned how to be happy more from you, ’Lores, than from Dick. But I don’t mind acknowledging that I was all wrong about the way I treated him before you came. Don’t you think he ’preciates, though, that I’ve tried to make it up to him? The way he pecks around my fingers when I hold his lettuce-leaf shows he’s not afraid of me any more. And the way he _sings_! ’Lores, when he perks his head on one side, just like John and me, and fixes his shiny eyes on mine---- D’you know, I think he is awful fond of me, ’spite of the way I acted. It makes me feel----” In the act of drooping, the over-large, brown-cropped head threw bravely back. “It makes me _ashamed_,” he finished. “Don’t you suppose we could let Dick out of the cage a while each day, just to give him a little the feeling that he’s free?” “Of course we could, Jackie. I am sure he’d soon learn to stay inside your rooms. He has more philosophy than you’d credit to his size or he’d never sing as he does in a cage.”