"One day, when a boy was going to town, his aunt gave him a big bouquet of pink roses. She told him to give them to some one who looked as if they needed flowers. So when the boy got to town he walked up Main Street and looked at every one he met. He hoped to see a little sick child or a tired woman who had no flowers of her own; but every one seemed to be in a hurry, and very few stopped to look at flowers or anything else. Those that did look turned away as if they did not see them, and some seemed to be thinking, 'What beautiful flowers!' and then forgot them. "At last he met a tall, stern man dressed in fine clothes. He looked very proud, but as if he were tired of everything. When he saw the flowers he didn't turn away, but kept his eyes on them as if they made him sad and lonesome in thinking of good times that were over. So the boy asked him if he would not like the flowers. The man looked surprised and asked the boy what his name was. When he heard it, he remembered that he had been attorney for the boy's father. He took him up into an office marked private, and he gave the boy some good advice, and talked to him about his mother, which made the boy feel bad. But the man comforted him and told him that every time he came to town he was to report to him." M'ri had sat motionless during the recital of this story. At its close she did not speak. "That wasn't much of a story. Let's go play," suggested Janey, relieving the tension. They were off like a flash. David heard his name faintly called. M'ri's voice sounded far off, and as if there were tears in it, but he lacked the courage to return. CHAPTER VIII Two important events calendared the next week. The school year ended and Pennyroyal, the "hired help," who had been paying her annual visit to her sister, came back to the farm. There are two kinds of housekeepers, the "make-cleans" and the "keep-cleans." Pennyroyal was a graduate of both classes. Her ruling passions in life were scrubbing and "redding" up. On the day of her return, after making onslaught on house and porches, she attacked the pump, and planned a sand-scouring siege for the morrow on the barn. In appearance she was a true exponent of soap and water, and always had the look of being freshly laundered. At first Pennyroyal looked with ill favor on the addition that had been made to the household in her absence, but when David submitted to the shampooing of his tousled mass of hair, and offered no protest when she scrubbed his neck, she became reconciled to his presence. On a "town day" David, carrying a huge bunch of pinks, paid his second visit to the Judge. "Did she tell you," asked the tall man, gazing very hard at the landscape without the open window, "to give these flowers to some one who needed them?" There was a perilous little pause. Then there flashed from the boy to the man a gaze of comprehension. "She picked them for you," was the response, simply spoken.