The fire was low, the gas dim, and Mr.Shaw was sitting in his easy-chair, his gray head in both his hands, looking lonely, old, and bowed down with care.

Fanny gave Polly one look, then went and took the gray head in both her arms, saying, with a tender quiver in her voice, "Father dear, we 've come to help you bear it." Mr.Shaw looked up, and seeing in his daughter's face something that never had been there before, put his arm about her, and leaned his tired head against her, as if, when least expected, he had found the consolation he most needed.

In that minute, Fanny felt, with mingled joy and self-reproach, what a daughter might be to her father; and Polly, thinking of feeble, selfish Mrs.Shaw, asleep up stairs, saw with sudden clearness what a wife should be to her husband, a helpmeet, not a burden.

Touched by these unusual demonstrations, Maud crept quietly to her father's knee, and whispered, with a great tear shining on her little pug nose, "Papa, we don't mind it much, and I 'm going to help Fan keep house for you; I 'd like to do it, truly." Mr.Shaw's other arm went round the child, and for a minute no one said anything, for Polly had slipped behind his chair, that nothing should disturb the three, who were learning from misfortune how much they loved one another.

Presently Mr.Shaw steadied himself and asked, "Where is my other daughter, where 's my Polly ?" She was there at once; gave him one of the quiet kisses that had more than usual tenderness in it, for she loved to hear him say "my other daughter," and then she whispered, "Don't you want Tom, too ?" "Of course I do; where is the poor fellow ?" "I 'll bring him;" and Polly departed with most obliging alacrity.
But in the hall she paused a minute to peep into the glass and see if she was all right, for somehow she was more anxious to look neat and pretty to Tom in his hour of trouble than she had ever been in his prosperous days.