Danny, as she and Ruby overtook the boy on the shore that morning.
"Ay, the long cat's tail was going off at a slant a while ago, and now the round thick skate yonder is hanging very low."
As he spoke, Danny turned about and looked at the clouds which we have been taught to know by less homely names.
"Danny, Danny," interrupted the little one, "what is that funny thing you told me the sailors say when the wind is getting up?"
"'Davy's putting on the coppers for the parson,'" answered the lad, absently, and without the semblance of a smile. For the twentieth time Ruby laughed and crowed over the dubious epigram.
Mona glanced sometimes at Danny's listless face as they walked together along the shore with the child between them. His look was dull and at certain moments even silly. Once she thought she saw a tear glistening in his eye, but he had turned his head away in an instant. There were moments when her heart bled for him. People thought her harsh and even cynical. "Aw, allis cowld and freezin' is the air she keeps about her," they would say. Perhaps some bitter experience of the past had not a little to do with this. Nothing so sure to petrify the warmer sensibilities as neglect and wrong. But in the presence of Danny's silent sorrow the girl's heart melted, and the almost habitual upward curve at one corner of her mouth disappeared. She knew something of his suffering. She could read it in her own. At some thrilling moment, if Heaven had so ordered it, they
