Janet laughed.  His tone, though bantering, was respectful.  One of the secrets of Mr. Tiernan’s very human success was due to his ability to estimate his fellow creatures.  His manner of treating Janet, for instance, was quite different from that he employed in dealing with Lise.  In the course of one interview he had conveyed to Lise, without arousing her antagonism, the conviction that it was wiser to trust him than to attempt to pull wool over his eyes.  Janet had the intelligence to trust him; and to-night, as she faced him, the fact was brought home to her with peculiar force that this wiry-haired little man was the person above all others of her immediate acquaintance to seek in time of trouble.  It was his great quality.  Moreover, Mr. Tiernan, even in his morning greetings as she passed, always contrived to convey to her, in some unaccountable fashion, the admiration and regard in which he held her, and the effect of her contact with him was invariably to give her a certain objective image of herself, an increased self-confidence and self-respect.  For instance, by the light dancing in Mr. Tiernan’s eyes as he regarded her, she saw herself now as the mainstay of the helpless family in the clay-yellow flat across the street.  And there was nothing, she was convinced, Mr. Tiernan did not know about that family.  So she said:—­“I’ve come to see about the stove.”

“Sure,” he replied, as much as to say that the visit was not unexpected.  “Well, I’ve been thinking about it, Miss Janet.  I’ve got a stove here I know’ll suit your mother.  It’s a Reading, it’s almost new.  Ye’d better be having a look at it yourself.”

He led her into a chaos of stoves, grates, and pipes at the back of the store.

“It’s in need of a little polish,” he added, as he turned on a light, “but it’s sound, and a good baker, and economical with coal.”  He opened the oven and took off the lids.

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about stoves,” she told him.  “But I’ll trust your judgment.  How much is it?” she inquired hesitatingly.

He ran his hand through his corkscrewed hair, his familiar gesture.

“Well, I’m willing to let ye have it for twenty-five dollars.  If that’s too much—­mebbe we can find another.”

“Can you put it in to-morrow morning?” she asked.

“I can that,” he said.  She drew out her purse.  “Ye needn’t be paying for it all at once,” he protested, laying a hand on her arm.  “You won’t be running away.”

“Oh, I’d rather—­I have the money,” she declared hurriedly; and she turned her back that he might not perceive, when she had extracted the bills, how little was left in her purse.

“I’ll wager ye won’t be wanting another soon,” he said, as he escorted her to the door.  And he held it open, politely, looking after her, until she had crossed the street, calling out a cheerful “Goodnight” that had in it something of a benediction.  She avoided the dining-room and went straight to bed, in a strange medley of feelings.  The self-sacrifice had brought a certain self-satisfaction not wholly unpleasant.  She had been equal to the situation, and a part of her being approved of this,—­a part which had been suppressed in another mood wherein she had become convinced that self-realization lay elsewhere.  Life was indeed a bewildering thing....