He smiled tenderly into the soft black eyes, as he drew her closer to him and said wistfully, "I wish the rest didn't count, children; but the fact still remains that I have not done right by my boy and girl. I am sorry, and when I get up from this bed, I mean to be a better man. "Decker has come back, we are going into partnership again and work those claims for all there is in them. Tom shall finish college and Tabitha shall go back to boarding school or wherever she likes. There is money enough for whatever you want, and it is all yours. A man with children like mine is graciously blessed. I have been a fool and wasted many precious years. I can't bring them back and live them over, but I can and will live the rest of my life right in God's sight. Can you still love me in spite of all that is past, children?" For answer, by common impulse they slipped their arms around him, and he drew each face down to his and kissed it. The barriers of years were swept away, and father and children were united by love. For a long time the little group sat there talking over plans for their future happiness and drinking in the supremest joy of living. Then the father spoke abruptly: "There is another matter, children. When I named you as I did, I thought I was spiting the world. My own life had been made bitter by just that same thing, and I wanted to get even; but I only broke your mother's heart and made you both as miserable as I had been. It isn't too late yet to change that. Drop those names I gave you and choose for yourselves what you would like to be called." They stared at each other, then at him, in dumb amazement. Change their names! The possibility of having such a privilege granted them had never occurred to either one before. At length Tabitha spoke: "If you had told me that once, I would have done it only too quickly; but now I have learned that if a person is kind and lovable, no one cares what the name is. Pretty names don't make nice people, and homely ones don't make them bad, either. I am--beginning--to rather like 'Tabitha' now, and I don't wish to change my name." "Or I mine," added Tom; and once more the father drew their faces down to his own and kissed them. THE END End of Project Gutenberg's Tabitha at Ivy Hall, by Ruth Alberta Brown