She had taken both the boy’s hands and had drawn him to her, and was looking up into his face with tenderness and longing.

Ralph could not speak.  He was dumb with the joy of hearing her kindly earnest words.  A light of great gladness broke in upon his mind.  The world had become bright and beautiful once more.  He was not to be without home and love and learning after all.  Then came second thoughts, bringing doubt, hesitancy, mental struggling.

Still he was silent, looking out through the open door to the eastern hills, where the sunlight lingered lovingly with golden radiance.  On the boy’s face the lights and shadows, coming and going, marked the progress of the conflict in his mind.

The lady put her arm around him and drew him closer to her, regardless of his soiled and dusty clothing.  She was still looking into his eyes.

“You will come, will you not, Ralph?  We want you so much, so very much; do we not, Mildred?” she asked, turning to her little daughter, who stood at the other side of her chair.

“Indeed we do,” answered the child.  “Mamma wants you an’ I want you.  I don’t have anybody to play wiv me half the time, ‘cept Towser; an’ yeste’day I asked Towser if he wanted you, an’ Towser said ‘bow,’ an’ that means ‘yes.’”

“There! you see we all want you, Ralph,” said Mrs. Burnham, smiling; “the entire family wants you.  Now, you will come, won’t you?”

The boy had looked across to the little girl, over to Bachelor Billy, who stood leaning against the mantel, and then down again into the lady’s eyes.  It was almost pitiful to look into his face and see the strong emotion outlined there, marking the fierceness of the conflict in his mind between a great desire for honest happiness and a stern and manly sense of the right and proper thing for him to do.  At last he spoke.

“Mrs. Burnham,” he said, in a sharp voice, “I can’t, I can’t!”

A look of surprise and pain came into the lady’s face.

“Why, Ralph!” she exclaimed, “I thought,—­I hoped you would be glad to go.  We would be very good to you; we would try to make you very happy.”

“An’ I’ll give you half of ev’ry nice thing I have!” spoke out the girl, impetuously.

“I know, I know!” responded Ralph, “it’d be beautiful, just as it was that Sunday I was there; an’ I’d like to go,—­you don’t know how I’d like to,—­but I can’t!  Oh, no!  I can’t!”

Bachelor Billy was leaning forward, watching the boy intently, surprise and admiration marking his soiled face.

“Then, why will you not come?” persisted the lady.  “What reason have you, if we can all be happy?”

Ralph stood for a moment in deep thought.

“I can’t tell you,” he said, at last.  “I don’t know just how to explain it, but, some way, after all this that’s happened, it don’t seem to me as though I’d ought to go, it don’t seem to me as though it’d be just right; as though it’d be a-doin’ what—­what—­Oh!  I can’t tell you.  I can’t explain it to you so’st you can understand.  But I mus’n’t go; indeed, I mus’n’t!”