--"You must stay until
morning, Lois. It is too late. Joel will toss you up a bed in
the loft."
The queer little body hesitated.
"I can stay," she said, at last. "It's his watch at the mill
to-night."
"Whose watch?" demanded Joel.
Her face brightened.
"Father's. He's back, mum."
Joel caught himself in a whistle.
"He's very stiddy, Joel,--as stiddy as yoh."
"I am very glad he has come back, Lois," said Mrs. Howth,
gravely.
At every place where Lois had been that day she had told her bit
of good news, and at every place it had been met with the same
kindly smile and "I'm glad he's back, Lois."
Yet Joe Yare, fresh from two years in the penitentiary, was not
exactly the person whom society usually welcomes with open arms.
Lois had a vague suspicion of this, perhaps; for, as she hobbled
along the path, she added to her own assurance of his
"stiddiness" earnest explanations to Joel of how he had a place
in the Croft Street woollen-mills, and how Dr. Knowles had said
he was as ready a stoker as any in the furnace-rooms.
The sound of her weak, eager voice was silent presently, and
nothing broke the solitary cold of the night.
CHAPTER III.
The morning, when it came long after, came quiet and cool,--the
warm red dawn helplessly smothered under great waves of gray
cloud. Margret, looking out into the thick fog, lay down wearily
again, closing her eyes. What was the day to her?
Very slowly the night was driven back.
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