She raised a sadly smiling face to his.

“Where would the arnica be—­if we had any, Donald?” she demanded.

“Where it used to be, I suppose.  Up on that shelf, inside the basement of that funny old half-portion grandfather’s clock and just out of reach of the pendulum.”

“You do remember, don’t you?  But it’s all gone so many years ago, Donald.  We haven’t had a boy around to visit us since you left Port Agnew, you know.  I’ll put some tincture of iodine on your knuckles, however.”

“Do, please, Nan.”

A little later, he said: 

“Do you remember, Nan, the day I stuck my finger into the cage of old Mrs. Biddle’s South American parrot to coddle the brute and he all but chewed it off?”

She nodded.

“And you came straight here to have it attended to, instead of going to a doctor.”

“You wept when you saw my mangled digit.  Remember, Nan?  Strange how that scene persists in my memory!  You were so sweetly sympathetic I was quite ashamed of myself.”

“That’s because you always were the sweetest boy in the world and I was only the garbage-man’s daughter,” she whispered.  “There’s a ridiculous song about the garbage-man’s daughter.  I heard it once, in vaudeville—­in San Francisco.”

“If I come over some evening soon, will you sing for me, Nan?”

“I never sing any more, Don.”

“Nobody but you can ever sing ‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginy’ for me.”

“Then I shall sing it, Don.”

“Thank you, Nan.”

She completed the anointing of his battle-scarred knuckles with iodine, and, for a moment, she held his hand, examining critically an old ragged white scar on the index-finger of his right hand.  And quite suddenly, to his profound amazement, she bent her head and swiftly implanted upon that old scar a kiss so light, so humble, so benignant, so pregnant of adoration and gratitude that he stood before her confused and inquiring.

“Such a strong, useful big hand!” she whispered.  “It has been raised in defense of the sanctity of my home—­and until you came there was ‘none so poor to do me reverence.’”

He looked at her with sudden, new interest.  Her action had almost startled him.  As their eyes held each other, he was aware, with a force that was almost a shock, that Nan Brent was a most unusual woman.  She was beautiful; yet her physical beauty formed the least part of her attractiveness, perfect as that beauty was.  Instinctively, Donald visualized her as a woman with brains, character, nobility of soul; there was that in her eyes, in the honesty and understanding with which they looked into his, that compelled him, in that instant, to accept without reservation and for all time the lame and halting explanation of her predicament he had recently heard from her father’s lips.  He longed to tell her so.  Instead, he flushed boyishly and said, quite impersonally: