Caroline was on her knees before the Angora and knew nothing of the flight of time, though it was really hardly more than a quarter of an hour before the kitchen rivalled Luella's in neatness and the pine table in the living-room, covered with a fresh cloth, and shiny plated silver, only waited its host. "Now if you'll step out and call your husband, Miss--I didn't just get the name?" said Luella invitingly. The girl rose from the chair where she had been sitting, motionless, except for her eyes, which had followed every movement of the older woman. She stood very straight and threw her head back with a gesture almost defiant. "My name is Dorothy Hartley," she declared, and ran abruptly out of the cottage. "Well, well," Luella shook her head whimsically, "she's pretty well wrought up, isn't she? Sweet little thing, too--real loveable, I sh'd say. It don't seem possible he'd be mean to her. But o' course he wants his breakfast fit to eat, just the same. I put a place for you, Car'line, 'cause I know you c'n eat, no matter what time 'tis--you're 's empty's a bag. There he comes--my, but he's haughty! He looks like somebody in one o' those novels, don't he, now?" They came slowly up the path, hand in hand, like children, her gray eyes on the ground, his black ones challenging the world. The clear mountain air carried his words easily to the two in the door: "Now, dearest, be brave! Remember, we are right, and we know we are right." She clutched his hand nervously, but made no reply. "Come right in," Luella urged them hospitably, "you must be 'most starved." "Oh, no," he assured her, with a loyal glance at the girl, "I--I had a good breakfast, didn't I, dear?" But his eyes brightened at sight of the half chicken and the omelet, glowing in a parsley wreath, and he had broken one of the puffy rolls and plunged into a great cup of coffee before he addressed Caroline. "You seem to be a valuable person to know," he observed, "you and Matthew Arnold or John Greenleaf Whittier or what-ever-his-name-is." Caroline looked embarrassed and helped herself to jelly. "You have helped my--we are very much obliged to you, I am sure," he turned to address Luella, who was passing from stove to table, "aren't we, dearest?" The girl sat with her hands in her lap, staring at her plate. "Yes, of course," she agreed, "certainly." "If you could come every day--they told me I could find some one to do that--it would be a great accommodation," he went on, with a worried look at the sad face opposite him, "and anything it might be worth, I am sure, Mrs.----"