“Not, John, dear, that Otto isn’t a decent man, as far as he goes,” she had once said to him, when the day’s work was over and they were discussing their neighbors, “and that honest, too, that he wouldn’t get away with a sample trunk weighing a ton if it was nailed fast to the sidewalk, and a good friend of ours who wouldn’t go back on us, and never did.  But that wife of his, John!  If she wasn’t as fine as the best of em, then I miss my guess.  She got it from that father of hers—­the clock-maker that never went out in the daytime, and hid himself in his back shop.  There was something I never understood about the two of ’em and his killing himself when he did.  Why, look at that little Masie!  Can’t ye see she is no more Kling’s daughter than she is mine?  Ye can’t hatch out hummin’-birds by sittin’ on ducks’ eggs, and that’s what’s the matter over at Otto’s.”

“Well, whose eggs were they?” John had inquired, half asleep by the stove, his tired legs outstretched, the evening paper dropping from his hand.

“Oh, I don’t say that they are not Kling’s right enough, John.  Masie is his child, I know.  But what I say is that the mother is stamped all over the darling, and that Otto can’t put a finger on any part and call it his own.”

Whether Kitty were right or wrong regarding the mystery is no part of our story, but certain it was that the soul of the unhappy young mother looked through the daughter’s eyes, that the sweetness of the child’s voice was hers, and the grace of every movement a direct inheritance from one whose frail spirit had taken so early a flight.

To Felix this companionship, with the glimpses it gave him of a child’s heart, refreshed his own as a summer rain does a thirsty plant.  Had she been his daughter, or his little sister, or his niece, or grandchild, a certain sense of responsibility on his part and of filial duty on hers would have clouded their perfect union.  He would have had matters of education to insist upon—­ perhaps of clothing and hygiene.  She would have had her secrets—­hidden paths on which she wandered alone—­things she could never tell to one in authority.  As it was, bound together as they were by only a mutual recognition, their joy in each other knew no bounds.  To Masie he was a refuge, some one who understood every thought before she had uttered it; to O’Day she was a never-ending and warming delight.

And so this man of forty-five folded his arms about this child of ten, and held her close, the opening chalice of her budding girlhood widening hourly at his touch—­ a sight to be reverenced by every man and never to be forgotten by one privileged to behold it.

And with the intimacy which almost against his will held him to the little shop, there stole into his life a certain content.  Springs long dried in his own nature bubbled again.  He felt the sudden, refreshing sense of those who, after pent-up suffering, find the quickening of new life within.