"That depends on how many good left-overs there are in the pantry and ice-box," said Phil, rising also. "I'll come and investigate, myself, thank you." Pinning up the train of her red gown and tying on a big apron, Joyce made quick work of her supper preparations, and the long, lonely day ended in a jolly little feast, which completely restored her to her usual cheerful outlook on life. Mrs. Boyd joined them, despite the fact that she must leave Lucy to eat alone, in order to do so. It was always a red-letter day in her drab existence when Phil Tremont came into it. She was such a literal little body, that she never joked herself. She was mentally incapable of the repartee that always flew back and forth across the table when Phil was a guest, but she considered his tamest sallies as positively brilliant. When she went back to Lucy she had enough material to furnish conversation all the rest of the evening. "Now," said Phil, when he and Joyce were back in the studio again, before the fire, "I don't want to upset your equanimity, but if you can talk about it calmly, I'd like to hear exactly how things are going with Jack and Aunt Emily and that little brick of a Mary. I had one letter from Jack the first of the winter, and I've had the casual reports you've given me at long intervals, but I've no adequate idea of their whereabouts or their present sayings and doings." "Suppose I read you some of Mary's letters," proposed Joyce. "I've been surprised at the gift she's developed lately for describing her surroundings. Really, she's done some first-class word-pictures." In answer to his pleased assent, Joyce turned over the letters till she came to the first one that Mary had written from Bauer. "It was written on pieces of a paper sugar-sack while she was getting supper," explained Joyce. "But you can fairly see the little town spread out between the spire of St. Peter's and the tower of the Holy Angels' Academy, with the windmills in between and the new moon low on the horizon." Phil, lounging back in the big chair, sat with a smile on his face as he listened to Mary's account of the rector's call, while she was perched up on the windmill. But when Joyce reached the closing paragraph about its being a good old world after all, and her belief in Grandmother Ware's verse that the crooked should be made straight and the rough places smooth, a very tender light shone in his keen eyes. He said in a low tone, "The dear little Vicar! She's game to the core!" Urged to read more, Joyce went on, sometimes choosing only an extract here and there, sometimes reading an entire letter, till he had heard all about her visit to Gay, her first experience at a military hop, their brave attempt to make a merry Christmas among strangers, and finally her experience with the Mallory children, because of their desperate need of money.