"Before I go in," she said turning to Kurt, "you must tell her who I am. Not what you said you were going to tell her, but where you found me and from what you saved me." His face flushed. "My dear little girl," said the woman quickly, "I don't care to know--yet. It is enough that Kurt brought you." "Mrs. Kingdon," said Kurt awkwardly but earnestly, "she is a poor girl who needs a friend." "We all need a friend some time or other. Come in with me." She led her up the steps. On the top one, the girl halted. "He found me," she told Mrs. Kingdon, "in the custody of--Bender, for stealing, and he took me away to save me from jail, to bring me up here to the 'best woman in the world,' he said, and I made light of what he had done all the way up the trail. And he was so kind to me--me, a pickpocket. I think I should go back--to Bender." She spoke with the impetuosity of a child, and turned to go down the steps. Kurt looked on helplessly, perplexed by this last mood of his prismatic young prisoner. Mrs. Kingdon took the girl's arm again. "You are going to have a bed and bath before you leave, anyway. Come with me. Kurt, you look as if you had best go to cover, too." Pen's outbreak had evidently spent her last drop of reserve force. She submitted meekly to guidance through a long room with low-set windows. She noted a tiled floor with soft rugs, a fireplace and a certain pervading home-sense before they turned into a little hallway. Again she faintly protested. "I am worse than a thief," she said. "I am a liar. I haven't told him--all." "Never mind that now," said Mrs. Kingdon soothingly. "You've been ill recently, haven't you?" "Yes; I was just about at the end of--" "You're at the end of the trail now--the trail to Top Hill. You shall have a bath, a long sleep and something to eat before you try to tell me anything more." Pen went on into a sunward room generously supplied with casement windows. A few rugs, a small but billowy bed, a chair and a table comprised the furnishings, but an open door disclosed a bathroom and beyond that a dressing room most adequately equipped. "This is clover," she thought presently, when she slipped into a warm bath. "And this is some more clover," she murmured later, as, robed in a little nainsook gown, she stretched out luxuriously between lavender scented sheets. "I don't care what may come later. I know that I am going to have a real sleep." It was five o'clock in the afternoon when she awoke. On the chair by her bed was a change of clothing, a pair of white tennis shoes, a dark blue skirt, a white middy and a red tie. "Oh!" she thought. "The kind of clothes I love." She hastened to dress partially, then slipped on a little negligee and began to do her hair.