“You can see for yourself there couldn’t have been anything at all in that spiteful Sarah Cheese-borough’s talk about him and her,” said Tabitha, who now felt herself to have been all along the champion of this injured couple. “How on earth a respectable woman can invent such slanders beats my comprehension.” Kate Minster laughed merrily aloud. “It’s lucky you weren’t made of pancake batter, Tabitha,” she said with mock gravity; “for, if you had been, you never could have stood this being stirred both ways. You would have turned heavy and been spoiled.” “Instead of which I live to spoil other people, eh?” purred the gratified old lady, shaking her curls with affectionate pride. “If we weren’t out in the street, I believe I should kiss you, Tabitha,” said the girl. “You can’t begin to imagine how delightfully you have behaved today!” CHAPTER XVII.--TRACY HEARS STRANGE THINGS. REUBEN’S first impulse, when he found himself alone in the little shop with his former pupil, was to say good-by and get out as soon as he could. To the best of his recollection, he had never before been in a store consecrated entirely to the fashions and finery of the opposite sex, and he was oppressed by a sense of being an intruder upon an exclusively feminine domain. The young girl, too, whom he had been thinking of all this while as an unfortunate child whom he must watch over and be good to, stood revealed before him as a self-controlled and sophisticated woman, only a few years younger than himself in actual age, and much wiser than himself in the matters of head-gear and textures and colors which belonged to this place. He could have talked freely to her in his law-office, with his familiar accessories of papers and books about him. A background of bonnets was disconcerting. “How beautiful she is!” were Jessica’s first words, and they pleasurably startled the lawyer from his embarrassed revery. “She is, indeed,” he answered, and somehow found himself hoping that the conversation would cling to this subject a good while. “I had never met her before, as you saw, but of course I have known her by sight a long time.” “I don’t think I ever saw her before to-day,” said Jessica. “How wonderful it seems that she should have come, and then that you came, too, and that you both should like the plan, and take it up so, and make a success of it right at the start.” Reuben smiled. “In your eagerness to keep up with the procession I fear you are getting ahead of the band,” he said. “I wouldn’t quite call it a success, at present. But, no doubt, it’s a great thing to have her enlisted in it. I’m glad she likes you; her friendship will make all the difference in the world to you, here in Thessaly.” The girl did not immediately answer, and Tracy, looking at her as she walked across to the showcase, was surprised to catch the glisten of tears on her eyelashes. He had no idea what to say, but waited in pained puzzlement for her to speak.