from the beginning. The improvement came so late as to be almost unwelcome.

Miss McAllister slid to the edge of the seat that brought her nearest to him and extended her hand. "Good-by and thank you," she said.

The hand that she had expected to clasp hers, even gladly, remained motionless on the neck of the mule. "Why, I thought you'd forgiven me," she faltered, slowly withdrawing her offered member and letting it drop limply in her lap.

"For what?" he asked, his dark eyes gleaming coldly from under the darker lock of hair.

"That's so," she said hardily, "you haven't anything to forgive me, have you? Well, then, why didn't you shake hands?"

"When I'm through I'm through," he explained somberly.

"So'm I," she promptly adduced in denial of some vague blame that he seemed to be fastening upon her.

"With a man, the on'y way to be through is all through," he said, "not holdin' a hand that he knows ain't his to keep."

"Still, we may be friends, mayn't we?” "I hope not."

"You hope not?"

"Them sort of friends don't work out to no good. Not but what I've seen it tried-up to Georgy. An', seein', I learned what I told you once that woman's pity is brutaler even than man's kindness."

He jerked his mule around and left her.

A

CHAPTER XV

FEW days and the inflammable waste was tucked away in the center of the hundred or more funeral pyres in the grove, ready for the match at any time, to be sure, but representing a shadow of a calamity whichever way the harassed girl owner happened to look at it. For if it proved unnecessary then had nine colossal dollars been expended needlessly, and if it came to be used, a freeze would come at the same time. A freeze would mean swift ruin, not a ruin merely of the present, out of which one might hope to extricate oneself in time and build anew, but a ruin as complete as that made by fire and flood-a sweeping away of everything, a complete annihilation of resources and resourcefulness.

Laurie found herself daily watching the grove with the apprehension of a mother hanging over the cradle of a baby threatened by death. Each orange that fell to the ground in its apparent prime, bruised and bumped her anxious heart in its descent. And, creeping nearer and nearer, there approached the day upon which she would have to pay her paltry debt to Selig. Its paltriness was what made it so horrible, but the debt might as well be a million dollars as a hundred. Under the circumstances one was as impossible to raise as the other.

"And where are the profits of an industry into which I have to put a hundred dollars before I can take a hundred out?" she constantly asked herself.

The fact that the season was Christmas added a touch of poignancy to the situation. To go around with a smile on the lips while real fear is gnawing at the heart is like being obliged to sing blithely while pumping out the hold of a vessel doomed soon to sink. To make matters livelier, old Andrew acquired the Christmas-card habit—a loathsome mania when in the acute form and she had to address them for him by the score, inventing a properly joyous and properly differentiating sentiment for each. To prove herself a gentleman and a friend to fifty people she did not know, and do it briefly enough to go by mail for a cent, was a wearing task. And The McAllister hated to have big issues treated hastily, often keeping her debating half an hour on the serious question of whether to send a certain man a picture of a cat in a mistletoe wreath, or of a plum pudding with steam coming out of the top. To risk a mistake would be terrible.

But the dear old man's childlike Christmas spirit was the right one, and she finally caught it, buckling down to the delightfully sticky occupation of making candied kumquats for her icicled friends in the cold belt. In grating the skin from these tiny citrus dainties she grated her own knuckles raw, to be sure, but also grated her soul free of its rough edges, being able to greet Christmas morning with the absolutely carefree sensation of knowing that she had not forgotten anybody.

And no morning could have dawned more lovely, or sent more sun to earth to lighten shadowed places.

"Merry Christmas indeed!" said Andrew, baring his courtly white head to the radiance and warmth, as he stepped upon the porch to greet it. He rubbed his thin old hands gratefully. "It has been many years,

my darling Annie Laurie, since I could utter 'Merry Christmas' so wholly from my heart. I have suffered more than you know in the biting north. To the old, the south is a happy haven."

"And to the young!" cried Laurie. "In spite of all my woes I feel as gambol-ish as a lamb.”

Her early chores were over and done. She had fed the frizzly chickens so lavishly in honor of the day that they were all stepping around as dreamily as sleepwalkers, the hens crooning a ditty that said, plain as plain, "Tails, I lay an egg; heads, I won't."

Little Eva, loaded to the brim with fish and sentiment, sported an enormous red bow of ribbon over one ear, taking it very seriously as if she thought it was a house that was going to fall on her if she did not keep a good eye upon it.

"'Woes'? A very far-fetched pleasantry, my dear!" scolded the old man, mildly severe. "I trust you are aware that you are a singularly fortunate young person, my darling."

He glanced impressively at the porch roof, then at the visible landscape, in order to rivet upon her the apparently escaping sense of her wealthy possessions.

"Moreover," glancing at his watch, "we are soon to take er dinner, dinner with the most respectful young gentleman I have met in America!"

"Grandpa, if you were just sixty years younger you would have something else to say about his 'respect.' You ought to hear him talk to me."

"Tch!" he ejaculated, dismissing the scurrilous persiflage. On the point of trotting back into the house, he paused to ask importantly, "What-may I ask-do you intend to wear at this-er-dinner?”

"I don't know," she answered, unregenerately enjoy

ing hearing him choke over the word "dinner” as applied to a noonday meal. He had never permitted her so to use it. But evidently whatever Roycroft said was right. "What shall I wear, grandpa?”

"I advise the most charming gown you own," he answered, a trifle pleadingly. "I very much wish Charles to have a glimpse of my Annie Laurie at her prettiest and best. He has never seen you look the lady in his life."

"Nor act it," she acknowledged to herself, turning as red as a poinsettia. Hearing him called "Charles" in that ordinary fashion made her flush painfully. By accepting it she felt as guiltily immodest as though she too had been thus familiar, whereas he was never anything less dignified than "Mr. Roycroft" on her tongue, in her thoughts-or in her prayers.

The wild-rose flush deepened on her cheek while she dressed, and, with the help of her becoming dinnergown, turned her into a very lovely lady indeed. Even callous Peter was smitten when he arrived with the carriage, though with two mettlesome bays on his mind and muscle, and with the exciting duty of being first to call "Cris'mus gif'!" heavy on his spirit.

But he need not have been worried. She knew the graceful tactics to be employed against an opponent of Peter's hue. So all the way from the house to the gate she pretended to be too busy picking specks from The McAllister's flawless black coat to remember what day it was.

"Cris'mus gif', Miss Laurie!"

"There! You caught me!" she exclaimed, exhibiting pretty chagrin with a naturalness that delighted Peter from his woolly pate to his new shoes.

She paid the penalty by presenting him with a purple