“Yes, so it does mine,” she said. “Mother is very wise, perhaps she can think it out, or I may get some hint at school to-morrow. But, anyway, after all, Papa, is one small brass cage and one teeny yellow canary a matter of such very great moment? I don’t know what cages cost, but seems to me I’ve heard some one say that you could buy a nice singer for three dollars. I’ve even heard of them as cheap as two. Why is it such a terrible thing to be given a little bit of a gold bird with a miracle in its throat? Please go to bed, Papa, and don’t bother about it.” Mahala arose and put her arms across her father’s shoulder, and her father drew her down in his lap and held her very close. In his most warmly sympathetic tones of adjuration he said: “My child, this is only the beginning of the things Papa is forced to say to you to-night. I never have known you to lie to me. Your face is impressively candid, I must admit. I must accept your word that you know nothing concerning the giver of this bird; but I have a very strong idea that you do know something concerning Junior’s injury which might have been, and yet may be, a thing extremely serious for all of us. There is such a thing as concussion of the brain developing hours after a blow on the head, you know.” “I hardly think, Papa,” said Mahala, carefully settling Mahlon’s tie in his own best manner, “that a blow on the _temple_ is going to produce concussion. It’s usually the back of the head, isn’t it, when there are bad results?” Mahlon drew a breath of exasperation. He caught Mahala’s hands from his hair and his tie and shoving her to the extreme limit of his knees, forced her eyes to meet his or deliberately avoid them. “Now, look here, young woman, let’s get down to brass tacks,” he said authoritatively. “Just what did Junior Moreland say or do to you at the gate?” With perfect equanimity Mahala met the eyes of her stern parent, and realized that the time had arrived when she was past subterfuge, that she was facing a stern parent. She might as well get it over with because she really was both tired and sleepy, while she greatly desired a space of uninterrupted quiet in which she might think. “He said that I was his ‘girl,’ and that when we finished school I was going to marry him. He was provoked about the bird. That’s what made him say it.” “Has he ever said things like that to you before?” demanded Mahlon. “He’s been saying that I was his girl ever since I can remember,” said Mahala; “but I’m not.” “Oh, aren’t you?” asked Mahlon, and suddenly, to his daughter’s intense astonishment, he was playful, he was arch, there was a smile on his lips, a light in his eyes; and correspondingly, there was no smile on her lips and no trace of light in her eyes. “Of course not, foolish!” she said immediately. “I am your girl, and Mother’s girl. How could I possibly be the girl of any boy in this town?”