With a quick twist of his arm, the bachelor dropped a newspaper within and rising bowed, a gallant little figure of a gentleman framed in the lamp-glow. "Allow me to present your Ladyship with one of my papers!" he said courteously. "And allow me to thank you for it!" interposed Aunt Cheerful gently. Again the boy raised his tattered cap and smiled, a grave little smile for all its brightness. "Good night, Lady Cheerful!" he said. "Good night, Lord Chesterfield and remember--any time your bachelor life grows too lonely--" But Lord Chesterfield was off into the shadows of the dripping lane, whistling as cheerily as a robin. Aunt Cheerful turned to the mystified guest at her fireside. "Oh, my dear," she exclaimed gratefully, "how very tactful of you to make no sound. The presence of a stranger would have confused him so! Just a little game we play each night, Lord Chesterfield and I--" "What a dear little lad he is!" exclaimed Jean. Aunt Cheerful bent and turned the dying log. "A kindly, courteous little gentleman, ever-mindful of my poor lame foot;" she said thoughtfully, "with his proud, boyish heart afire with dreams--dreams of becoming a very great doctor and a gallant gentleman. Why, my dear, his father was such a queer hermit who lived with this little son of his in a ruined shack along the river, a ragged, handsome, silent man of very great culture, 'twas said, and this fall when he died the boy refused to leave his crazy hut. A chore here and a chore there, so he lives, a wee, lovable, busy little hermit, selling his newspapers, sweeping out the school and the church, and doctoring all the sick animals about with arnica and witch-hazel. To be sure a hundred friendly eyes in Westowe watch over him in secret but few dare offer him any aid." "But why 'Lord Chesterfield'?" "I have read him such portions of Lord Chesterfield as I deemed suitable," replied Aunt Cheerful, "and we play our little game at his request that he may grow familiar with the ways and words of gentlemen." And Jean Varian brushed something away from her long dark lashes that sparkled suspiciously like a tear. Surely Aunt Cheerful and gallant Lord Chesterfield were worth the many, many miles of the rainy journey! "And now, my dear, to bed!" suggested Aunt Cheerful, smiling and with a busy tap! tap! of her crutch she was briskly leading the way up the winding stairway to a room above. A smell of pine, the lighting of a lamp, the quick crackle of dry wood as Aunt Cheerful bent over a tiny fire-place, and Jean uttered a cry of admiration. Pine cones and branches showered in pattern across the wall-paper and the carpet; pine-sprigged chintz covered the old-fashioned chairs, and from somewhere a pine pillow gave forth the fragrance of the winter forest.