The next day Garth received a telegram urging him to come at once to the Grand Canyon. He was needed because of some work at Vision House which had been stopped for his decision.

Marise believed that he had had the message sent to himself, and was grateful, for his departure relieved the situation. Later, she thought differently; but at the time she was pleased with the man. She even gave him a little appreciative squeeze of the hand when they said good-bye.

Garth was to be gone two days. He would then return, travelling at night, and after a few hours with Mothereen would take his wife and her maid away. Considering the circumstances, this was as good an arrangement as could have been hoped for by Marise. His absence, however, did leave the house very dull! Whether one liked Jack Garth or not, even if one hated him, his was a personality that made itself missed.

Of course, it was very unpleasant that she had to go and live in his house. In his rough-hewn fashion, he'd been rather decent in some ways, not abusing the man's power he had over her as a woman; still, Marise told herself that she thanked Heaven to be rid of him. She must not appear too joyous, however, or Mothereen would be shocked. So realistic was the girl's air of sadness (helped by a prospect of heavy boredom), that the dear woman attempted the task of cheering her up.

"Would ye like me to show ye an album of photos I have of himself as a boy and a growin' lad?" Mothereen wanted to know. "He was never much on bein' took, after he grew up. But I've kept all his letters he wrote me from the Front. They're great, and ye can have the run of 'em, me pet. But first we'll go through the album together, don't ye think?"

Marise said that she would be delighted. And she must have had a more angelic nature than she'd supposed, because the thought of the ordeal left her unruffled.

Mothereen brought the volume in question—bound in purple morocco—and a ribbon-tied bundle of letters to the girl's sitting-room. Then, with a beaming countenance, she settled herself on the sofa and opened the album on her lap. She had evidently no suspicion that she was being patronised good-naturedly by "Johnny's" wife. Indeed, she fully believed that the girl was impatiently waiting a treat.

"Come and sit down beside me, Mavourneen," she said. "That's right! Now we're cosy. See, this cute little photo at the beginnin' was Johnny when I had him first. Ye know the story, don't ye?"

"No-o," confessed Marise. She could easily have given an evasive answer; but suddenly she was conscious that she wished to know the story. "Maj—he—never told me."

"Never told ye!" echoed Mothereen. "Never told ye aught about the father he's so proud of, and all the rest? Why, if it had not been for that father of his, I don't suppose he'd have gone to the war like a shot, the way he did."

"Will you tell me—unless you think he'd rather you didn't?" asked Marise, gazing at the badly-taken photograph of a handsome, fearless-eyed child of five or six, in funny little trousers.

"Sure, there's no reason why he should mind. The boy has nothing to blush for. It's all the contrary!" said Mothereen. "And I will tell ye. It's right ye should hear what the gossoon fought his way up from to where he stands now. Ye've heard, at the least, that the father was English?"

"I think I did hear him tell someone—not me—that his father was a Yorkshireman," Marise remembered.

"He was that, and a gentleman besides, an officer in the British Army. His name was the same as the child's—John Garth. It was an American girl he'd married, a girl from out West here. She went over to England as a kind of a nursery governess with a family of rich folks, and there was a row—a flare-up of some sort. The folks left her behind when they came home, and the girl got engaged to sing with a little concert party, tourin' the provinces. It was in Yorkshire Captain Garth saw her, and fell in love. He was always inventin' something or other, was my Johnny's dad: like father like son, and when the one child born to the pair of 'em was a toddler, the Captain had an accident with some explosive stuff he was workin' at. The poor young man's right arm was blown off, and his eyes were hurt. That meant he must leave the army, and as he wasn't wounded in the service of his country, not a red cent of pension did he get! The poor girl wife was expectin' a second child, but the shock she got by the accident brought on her trouble before its time, and she and the baby died together.

"It was nip and tuck that the Captain didn't die too. But he pulled through somehow, and there was the boy to think of. When it turned out that Government would do nothin', the poor man had a notion to come to this side of the world—his dead wife's country. She'd always been tellin' him, it seems, that those inventions of his, that the British War Office turned up its nose at, might make his fortune in the States.

"Well, he took the little money he had left, and thought to try his luck. But he was pretty well done for, poor man, and a big storm there was, crossin', just about put the finishin' touch; for he broke his leg aboard ship."

"Were you on the ship?" Marise asked.

"Not me! 'Twas many a year since I was on board a ship," said Mothereen. "Me and my man—Pat was his name—we had our honeymoon in the steerage. 'Twas out to the West we came, near to where we are now, which is why me heart is in the West always. But troubles fell on Pat in business, and a friend of his invited him to join in a new scheme, back East in New York. The fellow'd been left a house there, off Third Avenue, and with Pat to help in the expense of a start, furnishin', advertisin' and the like, accordin' to him, they could coin money takin' boarders. It sounded all right on paper, and so it might have been in practice, maybe, with Pat to manage and me to cook, if half the boarders hadn't slipped off without settlin' their bills. But that's what they did, the spalpeens. And if troubles had been black out West, they was black and blue in N'York! This was the time when Captain Garth came limpin' in out of hospital, with his boy hangin' onto his hand. He'd seen our advertisement in a paper, offerin' cheap board. The man looked like death—and he didn't look like pay. But sure, me heart opened to the pair of 'em at first sight!............