toime, praise be."

"That's great," said Brown. "But I haven't worried about that. You never
have anything else, I'm sure."

Mrs. Kelcey shook her head in delighted protest.

"The table is jist the handsomest I iver laid eyes on," she asserted,
modestly changing the subject.

"It is pretty nice, isn't it?" agreed Brown warmly, surveying the table
with mixed emotions. When he stopped to think of what Mrs. Hugh
Breckenridge would say at sight of that table, set for the Thanksgiving
dinner her brother, Donald Brown, was giving that afternoon, he
experienced a peculiar sensation in the region of his throat. He was
possessed of a vivid sense of humour which at times embarrassed him
sorely. If it had not been that his bigness of heart kept his love of
fun in order he would have had great difficulty, now and then, in
comporting himself with necessary gravity.

Mrs. Kelcey herself had arranged that table, spending almost the entire
preceding day in dashing about the neighbourhood, borrowing from Brown's
neighbours the requisite articles. Brown's own stock of blue-and-white
ware proving entirely inadequate, besides being in Mrs. Kelcey's eyes by
no means fine enough for the occasion, she had unhesitatingly
requisitioned every piece of china she could lay hands on in the
neighbourhood. She had had no difficulty whatever in borrowing more than
enough, for every woman in the block who knew Brown was eager to lend her
best. The result was such an array of brilliantly flowered plates and
cups and dishes of every style and shape, that one's gaze, once riveted