"It makes my heart ache for you, dear Dainty, but it would be useless to deceive you. About the time that mother lay in her last sickness it was rumored that your mother came back here the very day after the house was burned. I did not see her myself, but it was in all the papers that she went suddenly insane, and after wandering wildly about the city all day, calling for you, took poison and died in an alley. I do not know where she is buried, for mother was so very ill, and died the same week. Since then I've had my heart and hands both full with the care of the children, and teaching school, too, for I would not depend on my step-father for a penny. You know"--whispering--"I always hated him, and there wasn't much love lost between us. Indeed, I wouldn't have stayed here a day after mother's death only for my little half-brothers and sisters. He had no relations to help him, and hired help is not very reliable. He keeps a servant, but they tell me she is unkind to the children when I'm at school. If you have no friends to go to, dear, I wish you would stay with me awhile, and look after the little ones while I'm away." It was a delicate offer of a shelter, for Ailsa's eyes had taken in the poverty of her guest, and Dainty was but too glad of a refuge in which to nurse her deep despair. When Ailsa informed her step-father questioningly of her offer, he smiled approval, and made Dainty welcome in his simple home, while tender-hearted Ailsa soothed her all she could in the bitterness of her bereavement. "We are both orphans, dear, and we can sympathize with each other," she said, tenderly, and helped her friend to get some neat mourning gowns, in which she looked so frail and lily-like that she seemed to be fading away like a broken flower. She tended patiently on the little children and won their love, and the exuberant gratitude of their father, this latter so effusive that it grew irksome to the sorrowful, reserved girl. "Oh, Ailsa, I do not wish to seem ungrateful, but I dislike the man as much as you do, and his attentions are getting too pointed to be agreeable. I am afraid I shall have to leave you and the dear children, much as I love you," she sighed, in December, after two quiet months in the little house; and her friend rejoined, indignantly: "I see he is trying to court you, although his wife, my dear mother, has been dead but a few months. Oh, why did she ever marry such a brute? I believe he broke her heart, for it was a strange decline of which she died. He was always flirting with his women customers, and scolded his wife harshly when she objected. He made her bitterly unhappy, the coarse, unfaithful wretch, and that is why I hate him so for my own papa never spoke an unkind word to her up to the day of his death. You will have to repulse him, but not too unkindly to arouse his enmity." But the crisis came suddenly the next day while Ailsa was at school. Mr. Sparks boldly proposed marriage to the indignant girl.