It's--it's the water of life to her!" And then, ashamed of saying a
thing that sounded as if it were out of a poem, he shook his
shoulders roughly as if to shake off a piece of sentiment unbecoming
his age and sex.

He went to the door and watched her as she passed away. "I'll bet
she'd never tip the scale to one hundred pounds," he decided. "Looks
like a good wind could blow her away." She stooped a little and just
as she passed from sight he saw that she was coughing.

Then the old man made what he prided himself was a great deduction.
"She's been there, and she wants to go back. This kind of takes her
back for a minute, and when she gets the breath of it she ain't so
homesick."

All through those July days he watched each night for the
frail-looking little girl who liked the picture of the pines. She
would always come hurrying across the street in the same eager way,
an eagerness close to the feverish. But the tenseness would always
relax as she saw the picture. "She never looks quite so wilted down
when she goes away as she does when she comes," the old man saw.
"Upon my soul, I believe she really _goes_ there. It's--oh,
Lord"--irritated at getting beyond his depth--"_I_ don't know!"

He never called it anything now but "Her Picture." One day at just
ten minutes of six he took it out of the window. "Seems kind of
mean," he admitted, "but I just want to find out how much she does
think of it."

And when he found out he told himself that of all the mean men God