"Have you lost all your luggage?" asked the lady, sympathetically.

"No," said the young girl; "I had none to lose." And she smiled a little
mischievously, as though she knew by instinct that her companion's
sympathy would at once degenerate into suspicion!

"I don't mean to say that I have not a knapsack," she added,
considerately. "I have walked a long distance--in fact, from Z----."

"And where did you leave your companions?" asked the lady, with a touch
of forgiveness in her voice.

"I am without companions, just as I am without luggage," laughed the
girl.

And then she opened the piano, and struck a few notes. There was
something caressing in the way in which she touched the keys; whoever
she was, she knew how to make sweet music; sad music, too, full of that
undefinable longing, like the holding out of one's arms to one's friends
in the hopeless distance.

The lady bending over the fire looked up at the little girl, and forgot
that she had brought neither friends nor luggage with her. She hesitated
for one moment, and then she took the childish face between her hands
and kissed it.

"Thank you, dear, for your music," she said, gently.

"The piano is terribly out of tune," said the little girl, suddenly; and