The woman was Jennie, the Oakland baker’s only daughter, who had no lack of country beaus, but was flattered by the attentions of one of the Jenks-Smith’s butlers, whose irreproachable manners of the count-in-disguise variety made the native youths appear indeed uncouth.  She grew discontented, thought it beneath her social position to help her mother in the shop, and went to town to work in a store, it was said until her wedding, which was to be that autumn.  Father worried over her and tried to advise, but to no purpose.  This was more than two years ago.  The butler left the Jenks-Smith’s, and we heard that he was a married man, with a family who had come to look him up.

Jennie’s mother said she had a fine place in a store, and showed us, from time to time, presents the girl had sent her, so thus to find the truth was a shock indeed.  Not but what all women who are grown must bear upon them the weight of the general knowledge of evil, but it is none the less awful to come face to face on a street corner with one who was the pretty village girl, whom you last saw standing behind the neat counter with a pitcher of honeysuckles at her elbow as she filled a bag with sugar cookies for your clamouring babies.

* * * * *

I suppose that I must have exclaimed aloud, for Jennie started back and saw us, then dropped her bag and began to grope about for it as if she was in a dream.

“Can’t we do something?” I whispered to Evan, but he only gravely shook his head.

“Give her this for the boys’ sake,” I begged, fumbling in his change pocket and finding a bill there.  “Tell her it’s home money from the Doctor’s daughter—­and—­to go home—­or—­buy—­a—­pair of shoes.”

At first I thought she was not going to take it; but having found her bag she straightened herself a moment, and without looking at Evan gave me a glance, half defiant, half beseeching, grasped the money almost fiercely, and scuttled away in the darkness, and I found that I was crying.  But Evan understood,—­he always does,—­and I hope that if the boys read this little book fifteen or twenty years hence, that they will also.

[Illustration:  FEBRUARY VIOLETS.]

As we reached the door the first snowflakes fell.  Poor Jennie!

* * * * *

The third day of our stay began in country quiet.  In fact we did not wake up until eight; everything was snowbound, and even the occasional horse cars that pass the front of the house had ceased their primitive tinkling.  The milkman did not come, neither did the long crispy French rolls, a New York breakfast institution for which the commuters confessedly have no substitute, and it was after nine before breakfast was served.

Evan, who had disappeared, returned at the right moment with his newspaper and two bulky tissue paper bundles all powdered with snow, one of which he gave to Miss Lavinia, the other to me.  I knew their contents the moment I set eyes on them, and yet it was none the less a heart-warming surprise.