back her calico sun-bonnet, and stood looking up at Mrs. Howth and Joel, laughing as they talked—­with her.  The face would have startled you on so old and stunted a body.  It was a child’s face, quick, eager, with that pitiful beauty you always see in deformed people.  Her eyes, I think, were the kindliest, the hopefullest I ever saw.  Nothing but the pale thickness of her skin betrayed the fact that set Lois apart from even the poorest poor,—­the taint in her veins of black blood.

“Whoy! be n’t this Tiger?” said Joel, as the dog ran yelping about him.  “How comed yoh with him, Lois?”

“Tiger an’ his master’s good friends o’ mine,—­you remember they allus was.  An’ he’s back now, Mr. Holmes,—­been back for a month.”

Margaret, walking in the porch with her father, stopped.

“Are you tired, father?  It is late.”

“And you are worn out, poor child!  It was selfish in me to forget.  Good-night, dear!”

Margaret kissed him, laughing cheerfully, as she led him to his room-door.  He lingered, holding her dress.

“Perhaps it will be easier for you tomorrow than it was to-day?” hesitating.

“I am sure it will.  To-morrow will be sure to be better than to-day.”

She left him, and went away with a slow step that did not echo the promise of her words.

Joel, meanwhile, consulted apart with his mistress.

“Of course,” she said, emphatically.—­“You must stay until morning, Lois.  It is too late.  Joel will toss you up a bed in the loft.”

The queer little body hesitated.

“I can stay,” she said, at last.  “It’s his watch at the mill to-night.”

“Whose watch?” demanded Joel.

Her face brightened.

“Father’s.  He’s back, mum.”

Joel caught himself in a whistle.

“He’s very stiddy, Joel,—­as stiddy as yuh.”

“I am very glad he has come back, Lois,” said Mrs. Howth, gravely.

At every place where Lois had been that day she had told her bit of good news, and at every place it had been met with the same kindly smile and “I’m glad he’s back, Lois.”

Yet Joe Yare, fresh from two years in the penitentiary, was not exactly the person whom society usually welcomes with open arms.  Lois had a vague suspicion of this, perhaps; for, as she hobbled along the path, she added to her own assurance of his “stiddiness” earnest explanations to Joel of how he had a place in the Croft Street woollen-mills, and how Dr. Knowles had said he was as ready a stoker as any in the furnace-rooms.

The sound of her weak, eager voice was silent presently, and nothing broke the quiet and cold of the night.  Even the morning, when it came long after, came quiet and cool,—­the warm red dawn helplessly smothered under great waves of gray cloud.  Margaret, looking out into the thick fog, lay down wearily again, closing her eyes.  What was the day to her?