He put his hand on her shoulder in its thin covering and patted it,
wondering at the silken, cool feeling against his palm.

"Kind, Miss Arundel? Pshaw! My middle name's 'Kind' and that's the truth.
Why, how does the song go--''T is love, 't is love that makes the world
go round'--love's just another word for kindness, ain't it? And it's not
such a bad old world either, eh?"

Without knowing it, with the sort of good luck that often attends the
enterprises of such men, Hudson had used a spell. He had quoted, almost
literally, her father's last words and she felt that it was a message
from the other side of death.

She twisted about in her chair, took his hand from her shoulder, and drew
it, stiff and sallow, to her young lips.

"Oh," she sobbed, "you're kind! It _is_ a good world if there are such
men as you!"

When Sylvester Hudson went down the stairs a minute or two after Sheila's
impetuous outbreak, his sallow face was deeply flushed. He stopped to
tell the Irishwoman who rented the garret floor to the Arundels, that
Sheila's future was in his care. During this colloquy, pure business on
his side and mixed business and sentiment on Mrs. Halligan's, Sylvester
did not once look the landlady in the eye. His own eyes skipped hers, now
across, now under, now over. There are some philanthropists who are
overcome with such bashfulness in the face of their own good deeds. But,
sitting back alone in his taxicab on his way to the station to buy
Sheila's ticket to Millings, Sylvester turned his emerald rapidly about