you out a suitable black bonnet. You'd look
nice starring round in leghorn and forget-me-nots, now, wouldn't you?"

Mary Isabel privately thought she would, but she gave in, of course,
although she did hate bitterly that unbought, unescapable bonnet.

"Well, do as you think best, Louisa," she said with a sigh. "I suppose
it doesn't matter much. Nobody cares how I look anyhow. But can't I go
to town with you? I want to pick out my new silk."

"I'm as good a judge of black silk as you," said Louisa shortly. "It
isn't safe to leave the house alone."

"But I don't want a black silk," cried Mary Isabel. "I've worn black
so long; both my silk dresses have been black. I want a pretty
silver-grey, something like Mrs. Chester Ford's."

"Did anyone ever hear such nonsense?" Louisa wanted to know, in
genuine amazement. "Silver-grey silk is the most unserviceable thing
in the world. There's nothing like black for wear and real elegance.
No, no, Mary Isabel, don't be foolish. You must let me choose for you;
you know you never had any judgment. Mother told you so often enough.
Now, get your sunbonnet and take a walk to the shore. You look tired.
I'll get the tea."

Louisa's tone was kind though firm. She Was really good to Mary Isabel
as long as Mary Isabel gave her her own way peaceably. But if she had
known Mary Isabel's secret she would never have permitted those walks
to the shore.

Mary Isabel sighed again, yielded, and went out. Across a green field
from the Irving cottage Dr. Donald Hamilton's big house was hooding
itself in the shadows of the thick fir grove that enabled the doctor
to have a garden. There was no shelter at the cottage, so the Irving
"girls" never tried to have a garden. Soon after Dr. Hamilton had come
there to live he had sent a bouquet of early daffodils over by his
housekeeper. Louisa had taken them gingerly in her extreme fingertips,
carried them across the field to the lawn fence, and cast them over
it, under the amused grey eyes of portly Dr. Hamilton, who was looking
out of his office window. Then Louisa had come back to the porch door
and ostentatiously washed her hands.

"I guess that will settle Donald Hamilton," she told the secretly
sorry Mary Isabel triumphantly, and it did settle him--at least as far
as any farther social advances were concerned.

Dr. Hamilton was an excellent physician and an equally excellent man.
Louisa Irving could not have picked a flaw in his history or
charact