The morning sunlight helped Miss Morgan to put aside the problems of the night; she hummed an old war tune as she went about her work, but it did not lift the silence from the house.  The rooms that a few days before had been vocal with life, were so dead that the clock ticking in the parlor might be heard in the kitchen.  The canary’s cheerful song echoed shrilly through the silent place.  Miss Morgan said to him, “Dickey, Dickey, for gracious sake, keep still—­you’ll drive me wild.”  But her voice only increased the bird’s vehemence, and the throbbing in her ears brought on a headache.  When she put a paper over the cage, the clock annoyed her.  She was irritated by a passing boy whistling “The Girl I Left Behind Me” with all his might, but sadly off the key.  She went to the window and saw Bud Perkins.

[Illustration:  “Dickey, Dickey, for gracious sake, keep still.”]

She did not know that the child had just arisen from a cheering breakfast at the Penningtons’—­even if she knew how much a hearty breakfast cheers up any boy.  But the spectacle of the orphan facing the world so bravely moved Miss Morgan.  She felt a sudden wave of pity, and with it came the conviction of guilt—­that she had been selfish while the boy was suffering.  She had heard at the Penningtons’ that the county would probably take charge of him; but she recalled what she had heard in its full meaning to the child only when she saw him turn the corner, going toward the centre of the town.  There was a feeling of keen joy in her heart as she realized that she was not useless in the world, and she went about her morning’s work with the lightest heart in all Willow Creek beating in her breast.

Bud Perkins had seen but two Memorial Days in Kansas—­and upon each of these days he and his father had gone fishing.  The boy knew it was a soldiers’ holiday, and from Piggy Pennington Bud had found out what were the purposes of the day.  He knew that his father had been a soldier—­a soldier on the wrong side.  But he did not know that graves of Confederate soldiers were not included in the day’s sacrament.

“Mornin’, Captain,” said Bud to a slight, gray-haired old man, stooping over a basket of flowers in a vacant store-room in the main street of the town.

When the man replied kindly the boy took heart to say:  “You must be kind o’ runnin’ things here, I guess.”

“I’m in charge of the flowers, Bud, just for to-day,” replied Captain Meyers, who did not wish to seem as vain-glorious as he was.

“Goin’ to put flowers on all the soldiers’ graves—­are you?” queried Bud.  The elder replied that the Post aimed to do so.

“Did you know my dad was a soldier?” was the boy’s next question.

[Illustration:  “Did you know my dad was a soldier?”]

The captain’s heart was pricked when he saw what was in Bud’s mind.  The captain knew what the next query would be.  He was a gentle man and kind.  So, looking about to see if any comrades of a sterner sect than he were in hearing before replying, he said:  “You mustn’t feel bad now, Buddie, but it’s only them on the Union side—­whose graves we decorate to-day.  I wouldn’t mind, if I was you.”  Captain Meyers was not a diplomat, and he said the words poorly.