_Crash!_ Both men sprang to their feet. Mary-in-the-kitchen had dropped a plate, the first thing she had broken since she entered the Aymers' service. She stooped hastily to gather up the fragments. Pippin ran to help her, but she motioned him away, hastily, almost rudely. No, she thanked him--she was just as much obliged--she thought she could fit the pieces together. She didn't know what made her so careless--here she suddenly dropped the pieces again on the floor and ran out of the room and up the stairs. "Green grass!" said Pippin. "Now wouldn't that give you a pain? Just one plate, and hurt her feelin's like that! They're so delicate in their feelin's, ladies is. Gee! 'Member when I fell downstairs with the whole of A corridor's dishes, Elder? Now _that_ was some smash, it sure was!" In her own room, standing at the window with wide eyes that staring out yet saw nothing, Mary Blossom wrestled through her dark hour alone. This, then, was what it all meant. This was what had brought him to Blankboro, the bright-eyed singer with his wheel. He was looking for her. That--that man--had sent him to hunt her down, to drag her from her safe, happy, respectable home, to drag her back to him where he lay, in a poorhouse, suffering a little--oh, a very, _very_ little--of what her mother had suffered through him. After all these years, when she had all but--not forgotten mother; never! never! she broke into wild sobbing and crying--but forgotten him, and the shame, and misery, the cold, hunger, nakedness that he stood for. After all these years he had reached out that palsied, shaking hand and laid it on her. Or tried to! Mary stood still, and let the tide of feeling surge through and through her. Grief, resentment, resistance. Back and forth it flowed, till from its surge a thought was cast up. _No one knew._ He, Pippin, did not know; never would know, unless she told him. Why--should--she--tell him? No one--except Mrs. Appleby, of course; she knew, but she would keep it close. They never told a girl's past at the Home, unless there was reason; unless she was adopted, or--or married, or the like of that. Even Mrs. Aymer knew no more than that she came well recommended. (But here Mary was mistaken: Lucy Aymer knew all about it.) She had had a note from Mrs. Appleby, asking her to come to the Home on her first afternoon out, and she would. She would tell that kind, motherly friend about--about-- The wild tides stopped racing. Her eyes dropped. What should she tell Mrs. Appleby about Pippin? Straightway his figure rose before her. His eyes, dark, bright, glowing, looked into hers; she forgot Mrs. Appleby. What was it he was saying? "He plead with me; plead real pitiful, I'd find his little gal for him. What would you done, Elder?"