"Well, how is the missionary to South Harvey," chirrups the Doctor as he mounts the steps, and sees his daughter, waiting for him on the veranda. She looks cool and fresh and beautiful. Her eyes and her skin glow with health and her face beams upon him out of a soul at peace. "She's all right," returns the daughter, smiling. "How's the khedive of Greeley county?" As the Doctor mounts the steps she continues: "Sit down, father--I've something on my mind." To her father's inquiring face she replied, "It's Lila. Her father has been after her again. She just came home crying as though her little heart would break. It's so pitiful--she loves him; that is left over from her babyhood; but she is learning someway--perhaps from the children, perhaps from life--what he has done--and when he tries to attract her--she shrinks away from him." "And he knows why--he knows why, Laura." The Doctor taps the floor softly with his cane. "It isn't all gone--Tom's heart, I mean. Somewhere deep in his consciousness he is hungering for affection--for respect--for understanding. You haven't seen Tom's eyes recently?" The daughter makes no reply. "I have," he continues. "They're burned out--kind of glassy--scummed over with the searing of the hell he carries in his heart--like the girls' eyes down in the Row. For he is dying at the heart--burning out with everything he has asked for in his hands, yet turning to Lila!" "Father," she says with her eyes brimming, "I'm not angry with Tom--only sorry. He hasn't hurt me--much--when it's all figured out. I still have my faith--my faith in folks--and in God! Really to take away one's faith is the only wrong one can do to another!" The father says, "The chief wrong he did you was when he married you. It was nobody's fault; I might have stopped it--but no man can be sure of those things. It was just one of the inevitable mistakes of youth, my dear, that come into our lives, one way or another. They fall upon the just and the unjust--without any reference to deserts." She nods her assent and they sit listening to the sounds of the closing day--to the vesper bell in the Valley, to the hum of the trolley bringing its homecomers up from the town; to the drone of the five o'clock whistles in South Harvey, to the rattle of homebound buggies. Twice the daughter starts to speak. The second time she stops the Doctor pipes up, "Let it come--out with it--tell your daddy if anything is on your mind." She smiles up into his mobile face, to find only sympathy there. So she speaks, but she speaks hesitatingly.