Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/128

118 thoughts, mean little self-centered acts, for years and years. The sailor's life had a glow like the sky, Reba thought.

She couldn't go to sleep after she had crawled into the little bed in the corner. There was so much to think about! Ridgefield was only three months away, and yet a man had told her she was the only woman in his life, beside his mother. She believed, too, that she had been asked in marriage! If so—why, the magic wand had been waved over her, and she was no longer of the undesired.

Not that she could marry him. Of course not! He wasn't anybody she could marry, and take to Ridgefield, for instance; but anyhow, a man lived, such as he was, who had wanted her. No one could say she hadn't a right to a tender memory hereafter. Even Aunt Augusta's jibes would lose their edge now. Nathaniel Cawthorne had placed a crown upon Reba. She woke the next morning to the realization of its unfamiliar touch upon her brow, and with the queer sensation that she was somebody else. "No longer unwanted. No longer unwanted." Oh, more than a crown! The declaration of the stranger's regard for her completely surrounded Reba, cast about her a magical aura which made everything she looked at take on a roseate hue. The whole world seemed generous to Reba that morning. As she sat down at the breakfast-table, and heard herself greeted with a cheery salute or two, she glowed.

"Hello, Jeromey," sang out some one.

It was Mamie's particular nickname for her, but it was being adopted by many of the roomers in her corridor now. What a sound of good-fellowship it