Mrs. Burgoyne had a desk and a corner of her own, where her trim figure might be seen daily for an hour or two, from ten o’clock until the small girls came in to pick her up on their way home from school for luncheon.  Barry found her brimming with ideas.  She instituted the “Women’s Page,” the old familiar page of answered questions, and formulas for ginger-bread, and brief romances, and scraps of poetry, and she offered through its columns a weekly cash prize for contributions on household topics.  An exquisite doll appeared in the window of the Mail office, a doll with a flower-wreathed hat, and a ruffled dress, and a little parasol to match the dress, and loitering little girls, drawn from all over the village to study this dream of beauty, learned that they had only to enter a loaf of bread of their own making in the Mail contest, to stand a chance of carrying the little lady home.  Beside the doll stood a rifle, no toy, but a genuine twenty-two Marlin. for the boy whose plans for a vegetable garden seemed the best and most practical, Mrs. Burgoyne herself talked to the children when they came shyly in to investigate.  “She seems to want to know every child in the county, the darling!” said Miss Watson to Fergy.

The Valentines, father and son, came into the Mail office one warm June morning, to find the editor of the “Women’s Page” busy at her desk, with the sunlight lying in a bright bar across her uncovered hair, and a vista of waving green boughs showing through the open window behind her.

“What are you two doing here at this hour?” said Sidney, laying down her pen and leaning back in her chair as if glad of a moment’s rest.  “Why, Billy!” she added in admiring tones, “let me see you!  How very, very nice you look!”

For the little fellow was dressed in a new sailor suit that was a full size too large for him, his wild mop had been cut far too close, and a large new hat and new shoes were much in evidence.

“D’you think he looks all right?” said Barry with an anxious wistfulness that went straight to her heart.  “He looks better, doesn’t he?  I’ve been fixing him up.”

“And free sailor waists, and stockings, and nighties,” supplemented Billy, also anxious for her approval.

“He looks lovely!” said Sidney, enthusiastically, even while she was mentally raising the collar of his waist, and taking an inch or two off the trousers.  She lifted the child up to sit on his father’s desk, and kissed the top of his little cropped head.

“We may not express ourselves very fluently,” said Barry, who was seated in his own revolving chair and busily opening and shutting the drawers of his desk, “but we appreciate the interest beautiful ladies take in our manners and morals, and the new tooth-brushes they buy us—­”

“My dear!” protested Mrs. Burgoyne, between laughter and tears, “Ellen used his old one up, cleaning out their paint-boxes!” And she put her warm hand on his shoulder, and said, “Don’t be a goose, Barry!” as unselfconsciously as a sister might.  “Where are you two boys going, Billy?” she asked, going back to her own desk.