was dreadfully afraid that I was going to be tempted, when slowly, bead
by bead, came out this amber necklace. Lu fairly screamed; as for me, I
just drew breath after breath, without a word. Of course they were for
me;--I reached my hands for them.

"Oh, wait!" said papa. "Yone or Lu?"

"Now how absurd, papa!" I exclaimed. "Such things for Lu!"

"Why not?" asked Lu,--rather faintly now, for she knew I always carried
my point.

"The idea of you in amber, Lu! It's too foreign; no sympathy between
you!"

"Stop, stop!" said papa. "You shan't crowd little Lu out of them. What
do you want them for, Lu?"

"To wear," quavered Lu,--"like the balls the Roman ladies carried for
coolness."

"Well, then, you ought to have them. What do you want them for, Yone?"

"Oh, if Lu's going to have them, I _don't_ want them."

"But give a reason, child."

"Why, to wear, too,--to look at,--to have and to hold for better, for
worse,--to say my prayers on," for a bright idea struck me, "to say
my prayers on, like the Florence rosary." I knew that would finish the
thing.

"Like the Florence rosary?" said papa, in a sleepy voice. "Why, this
_is_ the Florence rosary."

Of course, when we knew that, we were both more crazy to obtain it.

"Oh, Sir," just fluttered Lu, "where did you get it?"

"I got it; the question is, Who's to have it?"

"I must and will, potential and imperative," I exclaimed, quite on fire.
"The nonsense of the thing! Girls with lucid eyes, like shadowy shallows
in quick brooks, can wear crystallizations. As for me, I can wear
only concretions and growths; emeralds and all their cousins would
be shockingly inharmonious on me; but you know, Lu, how I use Indian
spices, and scarlet and white berries and flowers, and little hearts and
notions of beautiful copal that Rose carved for you,--and I can wear
sandal-wood and ebony and pearls, and now this amber. But you, Lu,
you can wear every kind of precious stone, and you may have Aunt
Willoughby's rubies that she promised me; they are all in tone with you;
but I must have this."

"I don't think you're right," said Louise, rather soberly. "You strip
yourself of great advantages. But about the rubies, I don't want
anything so flaming, so you may keep them; and I don't care at all about
this. I think, Sir, on the whole, they belong to Yone for her name."

"So they do," said papa. "But not to be bought off! That's my little
Lu!"

And somehow Lu, who had been holding