She knew what he had done himself. He had left everything, he, a stranger--that is, one that had been a sinner--and come back where he knew there was danger for him, to look for the child of an old rascal who was nothing to him. That was what Pippin had done; and she, the old man's child-- New waves this time, Mary! Hot waves of shame and contrition, sweeping resistless through you, driving grief and anger and resistance away into the nothingness of past emotion. Long she stood there motionless, still staring with unseeing eyes. At last she heaved a long, sobbing sigh. She would be good. God make her a good girl. She would try. What was it he had said the other night, when he told her that strange thing about the Bible in his room, about the rules of some queer Society or other? She heard his laugh ring out clear and joyous, saw his head thrown back. "Honest, Miss Mary, I'll never forget the Gideons. Why, since that night, if ever anything gets me riled up, I take and read 13th Corinthians. Then I'll say to myself, 'Have you give all your goods to feed the poor?' I'll say, 'Have you give your body to be burned? Well, then, dry up!'" Mary laughed, a little broken laugh with tears in it. "I certainly haven't given my body to be burned!" she said. Half an hour later, a composed and cheerful Mary came quietly down the back stairs to the kitchen. The traces of tears were nearly gone; cold water can do much in that way. A Mary-in-the-parlor might have blotted them out with powder, but Mary-in-the-kitchen had never used powder in her clean, wholesome, scientific-general life. Her eyes merely looked rather larger than usual, and the long lashes were still curling from the water. She was not smiling yet, but she was ready to smile when she met the eyes of her friend. How they would flash when she told him, when he learned that his search was over, that she was Mary Blossom, that she would go back with him, to do what duty and kindness could do! How he would spring up-- So coming lightly down to the door, she paused a moment, not to listen, just to make sure she was not interrupting anything private. Pippin was still leaning forward, light, alert, as if even sitting he felt the wings on his ankles; he was looking at his friend, with a glance half timid, half whimsical. "You see, Elder," he said, "I _ain't_ exactly alone, like you think. You're right about it's bein' poor dope for a guy to live all by himself, but lemme tell you! I've got--what I would say is--well, I've got a family of my own a'ready--kind of! Not what you'd call a _reg'lar_ family, but yet they're dandy, sir, they are so! Lemme tell you! I never told a soul about 'em, but--" I have described the Mary who came down the stairs; it was a different Mary who confronted Pippin as, turning his head, he saw her and sprang to his feet. Marble white, with a blind dazed look, as if she had been struck in the face, the girl stood motionless.