as rather blind
where she was concerned. But what have you being doing to Fanny,
Graeme?"

"Rose, my dear," said Graeme, gravely, "Fanny has had a great deal of
sickness and suffering, and her change is for the better, I am sure;
and, besides, are you not speaking a little foolishly?"

"Well, perhaps so, but not unkindly, as far as Fanny is concerned. For
the better! I should think so. But then I fancied that Fanny was just
the one to grow peevish in sickness, and ill to do with, as Janet would
say; and I confess, when I heard of the arrival of young Arthur, I was
afraid, remembering old times, and her little airs, that she might not
be easier to live with."

"Now, Rosie, that is not quite kind."

"But it is quite true. That is just what I thought first, and what I
said to Norman. I know you said how nice she was, and how sweet, and
all that, but I thought that was just your way of seeing things; you
never would see Fanny's faults, you know, even at the very first."

Graeme shook her head.

"I think you must have forgotten about the very first. We were both
foolish and faithless, then. It has all come right; Arthur is very
happy in his wife, though I never thought it could be in those days."

There was a long pause after that, and then Rose said,--

"You must have had a very anxious time, and a great deal to do, when she
was so long ill that first winter. I ought to have been here to help
you, and I should have been, if I had known."

"I wished for you often, but I did not have too much to do, or to
endure. I am none the worse for it all."

"No," said Rose, and she came over and kissed her sister, and then sat
down again. Graeme looked very much pleased, and a little surprised.
Rose took up her work, and said, with a laugh that veiled something,--

"I think you have changed--improved--almost as much as Fanny, though
there was not so much need."

Graeme laughed, too.

"There was more need for improvement than you know or can imagine. I am
glad you see any."

"I am anxious about one thing, however, and so is Fanny, I am sure,"
said Rose, as Fanny came into the room, with her baby in her arms. "I
think I see an intention on your part to become stout. I don't object
to a certain roundness, but it may be too decided."

"Graeme too stout! How can you say such things, Rosie?" said Fanny,
indignantly.

"She is not so slender as when I went away."

"No, but she was too slender then. Arthur t