"This—this is a boarder! Now, don’t——" Norval could not catch the rest, but it was a warning to Jo not to put her price too high. "A boarder?" Jo got upon her feet, plainly affected. She took life pretty much as it came, but this unexpected appearance of her secret desire almost stunned her. "Where did you get him, Donelle?" Then the girl told her story while her yellow eyes danced with childish amusement. "He’s just like an answer to prayer, isn’t he, Mamsey?" "And I’m quite prayerful in my attitude," Norval put in. "Anything in the way of a bite and a bed will be gratefully received. Name your price, Mam’selle." Now that the hour had come Jo’s conscience and her sense of justice rose in arms against each other. "He looks as if he could pay," she mused. "But see how tired he looks—and interesting!" Conscience and inclination pushed Jo to the wall. However, she was hard-headed. "How about five dollars a week?" she ejaculated. "Oh!" gasped Donelle to whom money was a dead language; "Mamsey, that is awful." Norval was afraid he was going to spoil everything by roaring aloud. Instead he said: "I can stand that, Mam’selle. I suppose you’ll call it a dollar if I’m put out to-morrow?" "Surely." Then Jo bustled about preparing food while Donelle went back to Molly, with Nick hurtling along in the dark beside her. And so Norval, known as Alton, occupied the upper chamber of Jo Morey’s house. His artist’s eye gloated over the rare old furniture; he touched reverently the linen and the woollen spreads; he laid hands as gentle as a woman’s on the dainty curtains; and he gave thanks, as only a weary-souled man can, for the haven into which he had drifted. He was as nervous as a girl for fear he might be weighed and found wanting by Mam’selle Morey. He contemplated, should she give him notice, buying her. Then he laughed. He had not been in the little white house twenty-four hours before he realized that his landlady was no ordinary sort and to view her in the light of a mercenary was impossible. But Jo did not dismiss her boarder. His adaptability won her from the start and, although she frowned upon him, she cooked for him like an inspired creature and hoped, in her heart, that she might prove worthy of the fulfilment of her dreams. To Donelle’s part in the arrangement she gave, strangely enough, little thought except that the money would ease the future for the girl. Perhaps poor Jo, simple as a child in many ways, believed that it was inherent in a boarder to be exempt from the frailties of other and lesser men. She never thought of him in terms of sex, and Donelle was still to her young, very young.