He is no doubt a very thoughtful young man." "Bah!" answered Mr.Dale, "he comes to hear Lois sing." Mr.Denner gave a little start.

"Oh," he said--"ah--I had not thought of that." But when he left Mr.Dale, and slipped into the shadows of the Lombardy poplars on either side of his white gate-posts, Mr.Denner thought much of it,--more with a sort of envy of Mr.Forsythe's future than of Lois.

"He will marry, some time (perhaps little Lois), and then he will have a comfortable home." Mr.Denner sat down on the steps outside of his big white front door, which had a brass knocker and knob that Mary had polished until the paint had worn away around them.

Mr.Denner's house was of rough brick, laid with great waste of mortar, so that it looked as though covered with many small white seams.

Some ivy grew about the western windows of the library, but on the north and east sides it had stretched across the closed white shutters, for these rooms had scarcely been entered since little Willie Denner's mother died, five years ago.