who haven’t homes, and aren’t loved and cared for as I am. I tell you what, papa!”
“What, my own child?”
“If I shouldn’t get well, I’ll leave them you—not give you, but just lend you, for you must come to mamma and me when you die too. If you can find time, wouldn’t you do something to help them, if I ask you, papa?”
“Hush, hush dear, dear child,” said the Commissioner, holding her hot little hand against his cheek; “you’ll get well real soon, and you and I will see what we can do for them together.”
But in whatsoever paths of benevolence, thus vaguely premeditated, the Commissioner might tread, he was not to have the company of his beloved. That night the little frail body grew suddenly too tired to struggle further, and Georgia’s exit was made from the great stage when she had scarcely begun to speak her little piece before the footlights. But there must be a stage manager who understands. She had given the cue to the one who was to speak after her.
A week after she was laid away, the Commissioner reappeared at the office, a little more courteous, a little paler and sterner, with the black frock-coat hanging a little more loosely from his tall figure.
His desk was piled with work that had accumulated during the four heartbreaking weeks of his absence. His chief clerk had done what he could, but there were questions of law, of fine judicial decisions to be made concerning the issue of patents, the marketing and leas-
