"Oh, they'll love you, Bea," said Miss Billy enthusiastically. "You don't know what dear little things they are, especially just after they've been washed. Well, _that's_ settled, then. Margaret will be glad to relieve you at any time, I know,--and she will continue to look after Holly Belle's music, too. The way the child takes to it is simply wonderful. Francis, of course, will continue at the head of the Street Improvement Club." "Five long days between this and school, and nothing to do!" murmured Theodore luxuriously from the couch. "I shall drive no mules,--I shall instruct no growing intellects. Fads may continue to lead Miss Billy round by the nose, up to the very last minute,--but I shall do nothing at all!" "It has been a busy summer," said Mrs. Lee, with a half arrested sigh. "Is it good news, papa?" asked Beatrice of her father, who in the soft glow of the study lamp had been perusing the illegibly scrawled sheets of a special delivery letter. "It is more!" said the minister impressively. "It is a vindication of human nature under the worst circumstances. Nearly twenty years ago a young fellow came to me for assistance. He had been in a hospital with a fever, and had neither money, work or friends. He wanted to go out West, where he thought he might be able to find employment. I drew him out about his past life, and found he knew what it was to sleep in a haystack and be lodged in a jail: but I lent him twenty-five dollars----" "And he has died a millionaire and bequeathed you a fortune," wound up Theodore dramatically, sitting upright. "No," said the minister, smiling, "those things happen only in books. What the fellow has really done is to return me the amount I lent him, with a half-manly sort of a letter showing he has cherished a sense of gratitude all these years. That is much more than I expected." "Conscience money!" groaned Beatrice. "I suppose it will go to the poor." "Let us hope to the deserving poor, like me!" observed Theodore, dismally echoing the groan, and collapsing on the couch again. "Or like father," said Miss Billy severely. "It would buy him lots of things he needs." The minister sat tapping his glasses with smiling introspection. "When I was a lad," he said slowly, "I desired with all my heart and soul a certain steam toy. It was rather a clever contrivance, and of course, was expensive. But I wanted it more than I've wanted anything since. Sometimes I dream I am a boy again, and always I see standing in the black shadow of disappointment that steam toy." "And father's going to buy it now," said Theodore breathlessly. "No," said the minister, shaking his head: "It's too late! that's the worst of it. But that was a distinct disappointment in my life that no amount of reasoning could reason me out of."