“She has a sort of genius that astonishes me,” said he one morning, as he chatted with Mrs. Bird over the breakfast-table.

Polly had excused herself, and stood at the farther library window, gazing up the street vaguely and absently, as if she saw something beyond the hills and the bay.  Mrs. Bird’s heart sank a little as she looked at the slender figure in the black dress.  There were no dimples about the sad mouth, and was it the dress, or was she not very white these latter days?—­so white that her hair encircled her face with absolute glory, and startled one with its color.

“It is a curious kind of gift,” continued Mr. Bird, glancing at his morning’ papers.  “She takes a long tale of Hans Andersen’s, for instance, and after an hour or two, when she has his idea fully in mind, she shows me how she proposes to tell it to the younger children at the Orphan Asylum.  She clasps her hands over her knees, bends forward toward the firelight, and tells the story with such simplicity and earnestness that I am always glad she is looking the other way and cannot see the tears in my eyes.  I cried like a school-girl last night over ‘The Ugly Duckling.’  She has natural dramatic instinct, a great deal of facial expression, power of imitation, and an almost unerring taste in the choice of words, which is unusual in a girl so young and one who has been so imperfectly trained.  I give her an old legend or some fragment of folk-lore, and straight-way she dishes it up for me as if it had been bone of her bone and marrow of her marrow; she knows just what to leave out and what to put in, somehow.  You had one of your happy inspirations about that girl, Margaret,—­she is a born story-teller.  She ought to wander about the country with a lute under her arm.  Is the Olivers’ house insured?”

“Good gracious, Jack! you have a kangaroo sort of mind!  How did you leap to that subject?  I’m sure I don’t know, but what difference does it make, anyway?”

“A good deal of difference,” he answered nervously, looking into the library (yes, Polly had gone out); “because the house, the furniture, and the stable were burned to the ground last night,—­so the morning paper says.”

Mrs. Bird rose and closed the doors.  “That does seem too dreadful to be true,” she said.  “The poor child’s one bit of property, her only stand-by in case of need!  Oh, it can’t be burned; and, if it is, it must be insured.  I ’m afraid a second blow would break her down completely just now, when she has not recovered from the first.”

Mr. Bird went out and telegraphed to Dr. George Edgerton;—­

Is Oliver house burned?  What was the amount of insurance, if any? 
Answer. 
        JOHN BIRD.

At four o’clock the reply came:—­

House and outbuildings burned.  No insurance.  Have written
particulars.  Nothing but piano and family portraits saved. 
        GEORGE EDGERTON.