“Much good it’ll do her,” he exclaimed, mopping his brow with a soiled bandanna. “It is painfully evident that three of my girls will soon be women. If their mother were here, it wouldn’t be so hard to manage them. No, Sally, I’ve noticed no particular change in Jean.” “Because you are too busy for observation, sir. She hasn’t been a particle like herself of late.” The Captain hurried away to his work, muttering, “Nonsense!” Jean had seated herself on the most distant wagon-tongue, her battered, ink-bespattered journal in her lap, her pen in one hand, her inkstand in the other, her knitted brows and glowing face expressing deep concentration of thought and feeling. Captain Ranger, having finished his work of repairs, dropped wearily upon an axle-tree, and, for the first time in several days, prompted doubtless by the words of Sally O’Dowd, took a long and searching look at Jean. “Yes, indeed; Sally is right,” he soliloquized. “Jean is developing a wonderfully beautiful style of womanhood. What a pity it is that she cannot have her mother at the very time when she needs her most!” Pangs of anxiety akin to jealousy shot through his heart as he studied her features; her downcast eyes were hidden by the heavy lashes as she bent over her work. “She doesn’t resemble her mother as Mary does, but she must be the almost exact counterpart of what my mother was at her age,” he mused, as he noted for the first time the ripening lips, the rosy and yet transparent hue of her cheeks, and the sunny sheen of her hair. He was surprised that he had not before observed the soft, exquisite contour of her face and neck, the full rounded bust, and the shapely development of her feet and hands. As he sat watching the lights and shadows of thought and feeling that played upon her features, the remembrance of the girlhood of her mother, whose arduous married years had all been spent in his service, arose before him with startling power. “Dear, patient, tender, self-sacrificing Annie!” he exclaimed, as he arose from his rocking seat and strode away in the gloaming. “I never half appreciated your worth until I lost you for ever!” “No, not for ever,” softly sung a still, small voice in the depths of his inner consciousness. “Do not reproach yourself. All eternity is yet to be.” Jean felt, rather than saw, the pressure of his eyes, and half divined his thoughts. She felt the telltale blood as it rushed unbidden to her cheeks, and was seized with a great longing to throw herself into his arms and breathe out the full secret of her great awakening in his ears; but something in his manner repelled her advances, and she withdrew more than ever into herself.