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the footing she desired, and that was more on the boy’s account than her own. She saw and appreciated the struggle he was making to appear normal, and she wanted. to make things as easy for him as possible.

“I wonder if I dare,” she thought, glancing at the lonely little figure beside her, gazing with a polite assumption of interest at the picture before him. It was one of their first little expeditions after he had become strong enough to go out without his crutches. They had lunched at a restaurant, and were spending an hour at the Art Gallery. There was something so aloof, so forlorn, and yet so proud about the boy to-day in particular, that tears came into Alison’s eyes as for the hundredth time she tried to devise some means of helping him.

“If there were only some way in which, perfectly naturally, he could show his affection and I could give him a little of mine! For I do believe that if I only did pet him a little sometimes and he felt justified in cuddling me in return, poor darling—it might be rather a relief, and make things easier and happier. . . . And yet, the only way to make it simple and possible is a way I’m afraid to try, for I know no one can take his mother’s place to him, more by what he hasn’t said than anything he has told me. It’s very difficult.”

Nevertheless, as they found themselves alone in a gallery presently, Alison resolved to make the suggestion, as a last resource.

“Tony,” she began timidly; “there’s something I want to say to you, and you must hear me patiently to the end and not misunderstand me. Will you try?”

“Yes,” shortly. (Heavens! how nervous she was making him. What could she be going to say?) Tony stared straight in front of him and saw nothing.

“I’m afraid you’ll think I’m talking about things I have no right to talk to you of, but I don’t mean to be interfering