The ground for the building had been purchased and work was well on the way.  Shortly the roof-raising ceremony would take place.  In this part of the country it is the most important event in building.  Jane said that we were all expected to attend these exercises, even if we were so afraid of the criminal quarters that we had to take our hearts in our hands to enter.

Brown head and gray were bent together over blueprints and long columns of figures.  Both maid and woman were frail and delicate tools to be used in the up-building of wrecked lives.  Yet by the skill of the Master Mechanic these instruments were not only working wonders in other lives, but also something very beautiful in their own.

Zura took untiring interest in all Jane’s plans for the after-festivities of the occasion.  Most of their evenings were spent in arranging programs.  I took no part.  My hands were full of my own work and, while they talked, I paused to listen and was delighted not only in the transformation of Zura, but also in my own enlarged understanding of her.

I loved all young things, and youth itself, but I had never been near them before.  With tender interest I watched every mood of Zura’s, passing from an untamed child to a lovely girl.  Sometimes her bounding spirits seemed overlaid by a soft enchantment.  She would sit chin in palm, dark, luminous eyes gazing out into space as if she saw some wonderful picture.  I suppose most girls do this.  I never had time, but I made it possible for Zura to have her dreams.  She should have all that I had missed, if I could give it to her—­even a lover in years to come.  I did not share these thoughts with Jane, for it is plain human to be irritated when we see our weaknesses reflected in another, and encouragement was the last thing Jane’s sentimental soul needed.  I failed to make out what had come over my companion these days; she would fasten her eyes on Zura and smile knowingly, as if telling herself a happy secret, sighing softly the while.  And poetry!  We ate, lived and slept to the swing of some love ditty.

Once I found Zura in a mood of gentle brooding.  I suggested to her that, as the year was drawing to a close, it would be wise to start the new one with a clean bill of conscience.  Did she not think it would be well for her to write to her grandfather and tell him she could see now that she had made it most difficult for him?  That while she didn’t want to be taken back she would like to be friends with him?

At once she was alert, but not aggressively so as in the past.  “Ursula, I’ll do it if you insist; but it wouldn’t be honest and I couldn’t be polite.  I do not want to be friends with that old man who labels everybody evil that doesn’t think as he does.  We’d never think alike in a thousand years.  What’s the use of poking up a tiger when he’s quiet?”

I persuaded.

She evaded by saying at last:  “Well, some time—­maybe.  I have too much on my mind now.”