uch blunders, if it might be called by so
charitable a name. And Dorothy had always warned her against writing
letters to strangers. Oh, if she had only taken that advice! If she had
only been satisfied with that sacred five dollars, money so dearly saved
by her good mother! How many things that mother might have bought for
herself, for Johnnie, or for Tavia's father, Squire Travers, with that
fresh, clean five-dollar bill! But with what a world of love the
indulgent mother had, instead, placed the note in Tavia's hand, with the
remark:

"Now my little girl will have her own Christmas money. Now my daughter
will be as good as any one else."

"Oh, mother!" thought Tavia now, as she tried to summon courage to confide
in Dorothy. "If I only could be 'as good as other people,' as good as
Dorothy, and as--honorable!"

"Excuse me, miss," spoke the strange little woman in black, leaning over
to Tavia's seat, "but you dropped a paper."

"Thank you," replied Tavia as she hurried to secure an envelope that had
flurried to the floor from the depths of her muff.

"What was it?" asked Dorothy innocently, as Tavia hid the envelope again.

"Oh, just a letter," replied the other, avoiding Dorothy's glance. "I
thought I had destroyed it."

Attaching no significance to the remark, although Tavia turned about
uneasily, Dorothy put away her shopping notes, and as the train slacked up
under the great iron sheds of the city depot the girls made their way
through the crowds, out into the wintry day, along the broad pavements,
where the shop windows beamed in all their splendor of holiday goods and
Christmas finery.

"Be careful of your purse," cautioned Dorothy, making her own secure
within her squirrel muff.

"Oh, yes," replied Tavia with some impatience. It did seem as if Dorothy
thought of nothing but purses and money.

"We will have to be careful, too, where we buy," persisted Dorothy, "else
our money will scarcely go around."

Again Tavia felt annoyed. Was it because Dorothy had shared her money with
her that she made such a fuss about it?

"We must get the boys' things first," went on Dorothy. "The little fellows
must have their steam engines."

Then the face of her little brother Johnnie seemed to come before Tavia's
bewildered eyes. How he beamed when she promised him that engine! And how
fondly he kissed her when she declared it would make real steam! But she
had her own five dollars at that time. That was before she