"Don't talk that way, Kitty," rejoined her mother sharply. "You aren't
fit to judge of such things."

"I will be before long," said her daughter. "Anyway, Mrs. Crozier isn't
any better able to talk than I am," she added irrelevantly. "She never
was a mother."

"Don't blame her," said Mrs. Tynan severely. "That's God's business.
I'd be sorry for her, so far as that was concerned, if I were you. It's
not her fault."

"It's an easy way of accounting for good undone," returned Kitty.
"P'r'aps it was God's fault, and p'r'aps if she had loved him more--"

Mrs. Tynan's face flushed with sudden irritation and that fretful look
came to her eyes which accompanies a lack of comprehension. "Upon my
word, well, upon my word, of all the vixens that ever lived, and you
looking like a yellow pansy and too sweet for daily use! Such thoughts
in your head! Who'd have believed that you--!"

Kitty made a mocking face at her mother. "I'm more than a girl, I'm a
woman, mother, who sees life all around me, from the insect to the
mountain, and I know things without being told. I always did. Just life
and living tell me things, and maybe, too, the Irish in me that father
was."

"It's so odd. You're such a mixture of fun and fancy, at least you
always have been; but there's something new in you these days. Kitty,
you make me afraid--yes, you make your mother afraid. After what you
said the other day about Mr. Crozier I've had bad nights, and I get