But Ellen helped her with quick assent. "I'm so glad the little room is
so near. Bob won't be lonely, and I shall love to have him there. I can
hardly wait to see him."

Cynthia went away, rejoicing that her arrangements were approved. She was
devotedly fond of little Bob, Burns's six-year-old protégé, by him
rescued, a year before, from an impending orphan asylum, and now the
happy ward of a guardianship as kind as an adoption. She had been
somewhat anxious over the child's future status with her employer's wife,
but was now quite satisfied that he was not to be kept at arm's length.

"Some would have put him off with me," she said to herself, as she
returned to her kitchen, "though I didn't really think it of her that
took so much notice of him before. She's a real lady, Mrs. Burns is--and
prettier than ever since she married the Doctor, as why shouldn't she be,
with him to look pretty for?"

Left alone Ellen looked about her. Yes, this was the room in which he
had lived the sleeping portion of his bachelor's life, so long. It gave
her an odd sense of what a change it was for him, this having a woman
come into his life, share his privacy,--he had so little privacy in his
busy days and nights,--and occupy this room of his, this big, square,
old-fashioned room with its open windows, the one spot which had been his
unassailable place of retreat. She felt almost as if she ought to go and
find some other room at once, ought not to take even temporary possession
of this, or strew about it her feminine belongings.

The room was somewhat sparsely furnished, containing but the necessary
furniture; no draperies at the open windows, few articles on the high old
mahogany bureau, an inadequate number of nearly threadbare rugs on the