as she went to her room. Aunt
Olivia has the kindest heart in the world, she thought. What a pity
she isn't able to see things as they really are! My friendship with
Ada can't be perfect if I can't invite her to my home. And she is such
a dear girl--the first real friend after my own heart that I've ever
had.

The summer waned, and August burned itself out.

"I suppose you will be going back to town next week? I shall miss you
dreadfully," said Ada.

The two girls were in the Embree garden, where Pauline was preparing
to take a photograph of Ada standing among the asters, with a great
sheaf of them in her arms. Pauline wished she could have said: But you
must come and visit me in the winter. Since she could not, she had to
content herself with saying: "You won't miss me any more than I shall
miss you. But we'll correspond, and I hope Aunt Olivia will come to
Marwood again next summer."

"I don't think I shall be here then," said Ada with a sigh. "You see,
it is time I was doing something for myself, Pauline. Aunt Jane and
Uncle Robert have always been very kind to me, but they have a large
family and are not very well off. So I think I'll try for a situation
in one of the Remington stores this fall."

"It's such a pity you couldn't have gone to the Academy and studied
for a teacher's licence," said Pauline, who knew what Ada's ambitions
were.

"I should have liked that better, of course," said Ada quietly. "But
it is not possible, so I must do my best at the next best thing. Don't
let's talk of it. It might make me feel blueish and I want to look
especially pleasant if I'm going to have my photo taken."

"You couldn't look anything else," laughed Pauline. "Don't smile too
broadly--I want you to be looking over the asters with a bit of a
dream on your face and in your eyes. If the picture turns out as
beautiful as I fondly expect, I mean to put it in my exhibition
collection under the title 'A September Dream.' There, that's the very
expression. When you look like that, you remind me of somebody I have
seen, but I can't remember who it is. All ready now--don't
move--there, dearie, it is all over."

When Pauline went back to Colchester, she was busy for a month
preparing her photographs for the exhibition, while Aunt Olivia
renewed her spinning of all the little social webs in which she fondly
hoped to entangle the Morgan Knowles and other desirable flies.

When the exhibition was opened, Pauline Palmer's coll