“Well, child, the morning and the evening were the first day! Was this first one hard, or was it rather agreeable to pick up the threads again?” For the first time in her life Cis had a sense of belonging, and it warmed her with a thrill of actual pleasure, the perception that in spite of all and after all, it might be good to be alive. What a beautiful thing this elderly gentlewoman was doing, Cis thought, thus to feed the hungry! There were many who limited that corporal work of mercy strictly to its proper bounds; few who fed the hungry of heart, mind, and soul in Miss Braithwaite’s way, and yet it was more like feeding than it was like a ministration to the soul. To take Cis into her home, to warm her into renewed life, to open up to her hitherto unknown resources for the maintenance of life’s true values, this was Miss Braithwaite’s divinely inspired dealing with Cis. The girl knew that Miss Braithwaite was an aristocrat to her finger tips, exclusive in her friendships, withdrawn by instinct; that she wisely and justly chose those whom she would admit into her home. How fine it was then to fly at once to the rescue of Cicely Adair at the summons of Father Morley, mothering her as he had asked her to! Plainly, Cicely Adair must repay this goodness by its success with her; she must be good and happy; put away grief; grow in the directions which Miss Braithwaite indicated. Now that, for all the rest of the winter, Cis was to be an inmate of this ideal home--well, after all and in spite of all, Cis ought not to find her share of the days hard to fulfill. Miss Braithwaite would not let Cis tell her anything of the events of her day during dinner. “Dinner should be eaten to the accompaniment of chat, but not of long, nor of too absorbing tales, my dear,” she declared in her crisp little dogmatic way, half-amused with herself, yet entirely in earnest as to her dictum. “You will not eat properly if you recount to me the history of Mr. Wilmer Lucas and his reception of his secretary’s confession of crime! I know perfectly well that your wishbone will not be scraped clean if you are too absorbed in talk--it is chicken to-night! Beside the hearth, Cis; that’s the place for a long narrative! The table for brief comments and flashes of wit. At the table I disapprove of discussions, monologues, anything that too greatly distracts from the business in hand!” Later, “beside the hearth,” Miss Braithwaite handed Cis the tongs, and lay back in her deep chair with a breath of content. She looked like some sort of bird, tiny, alert, her quick, keen eyes flashing behind the eyeglasses resting on her thin arched nose; her hands making sudden small movements characteristic of them, not unlike the uplifting of a wing, its outspread and infolding.