Kern spoke timidly, though her wide eyes did not falter.

“Well—­not just to-reckly, ma’am.  The plan was, till I got my strength back, that I might lay off a little and go—­go to School.”

“I see.”

The tone was cool, and the girl added with a little gasp: 

“And then go back to bunchin’ again,—­yes, ma’am.  It’s—­it’s my trade....”

Many feelings moved in Cally, and it might be that the best of them were not uppermost.  Perhaps the glittering material possessed her blood, even more than of habit.  Perhaps it was only her instinct warning her to take her stand now with her father, where was safety and her ordered course.  Or at least it was hardly a pure impulse of generosity that made her open the plump little gold bag at her side, and produce a bill with a yellow back.

“I’m very sorry you’ve been ill,” she said, in her pretty modulated voice.  “As you probably feel that you got your illness in the Works, I should like you to take this.  Please consider it as coming from my father—­and buy yourself something—­”

All the blood in the little creature’s body seemed to rush headlong to her face.  She shrank away as from something more painful than a blow.  But all that she said was: 

“Oh!...  Ma’am!”

It was Miss Heth’s turn to show a red flag in her cheek.

“You don’t want it?”

“I—­why ma’am,—­I couldn’t ...”

“As you like, of course.”

She dropped the spurned gift back into her bag, with studied leisureliness, and rose at once, though she had made no purchase.  Standing, she made a slight inclination of her prettily-set head.  And then Miss Heth was walking away through the crowded aisle with a somewhat proud bearing and a very silken swish.

And Kern Garland swung round on her seat at Gentlemen’s Furnishings, staring wide-eyed after her, her finger at her lip ...

No fairy coming-true here, indeed, of that gorgeous fever-dream in which Miss Heth with lovely courtesy informed Miss Garland that she had been a lady all the time.  But consider the Dream-Maker’s difficulties with such far-flown fancies as this:  difficulties the more perplexing in a world where men’s opinions differ, and some do say that she in the finest skirt is not always the finest lady ...

Yet times change, and we with them.  It is a beautiful thing to believe in fairies.  In the valley, men have met angels.  Kern sat staring at Miss Heth’s retreating back:  and lo, a miracle.  When the lovely lady had gone perhaps ten steps down the aisle, her pace seemed to slacken all at once, and she suddenly glanced back over her shoulder.  And then—­oh, wonder of wonders!—­Miss Heth stopped, turned around, and came swishing straight back to the seat beside Kern Garland.

“That was silly of me,” said the pretty voice.  “You were quite right not to take it if you didn’t want it ...”