f getting herself lost
or of mixing up in some adventure where she does not belong, that she is
convinced a like fate has overtaken you. Then I believe that something
or other has happened which she has not confided to me, but which she is
dying to tell you. There are times, Esther, when I wish that our sister,
Betty, was not quite so pretty. I am always afraid that some day or
other these German students, whom she seems to have for her friends,
will be involved in a duel over her. And if that happens I shall very
promptly send her home."

Dick and Esther had now left the broad, park-like square and had turned
into a narrower side street adjoining it. Ordinarily any such suggestion
concerning Betty would have aroused Esther's immediate interest and
protest. However, whatever was now on her mind was troubling her too
much for her to pay any real attention to what Dick had just said. So
they walked on for another block in silence, until finally Esther spoke
in her old timid, hesitating manner, quite unconsciously locking her
hands together, as she had on that day, long ago, of her first meeting
with Richard Ashton.

"I am sorry to be so stupid and unentertaining. It was good of you to
come and look for me," she began apologetically. "I wish I could stop
thinking of what troubles me, but somehow I can't. For Betty will insist
on my doing a thing that I simply know I shall not be able to do. And I
do hate having to argue."

They were still some distance from the German pension where Dick, his
mother and sister and Esther were boarding, so the young man did not
make haste to continue their conversation, as he and Esther knew each
other too intimately to consider silences.

"Look here, Esther," Richard Ashton finally began, "you know that Betty
considers me the worst old gray-beard and lecturer on earth. So I am
going to be true to my reputation and lecture you. Why do you allow
yourself to be so much influenced by Betty? Don't you realize every now
and then that you are the older and that the Princess ought to come
around to your way of thinking? Why don't you tell her this time that
_you_ are right and she is wrong and that you won't hear anything more
on the subject that is worrying you."

Esther laughed, swerving suddenly to get a swift view of the earnest
face of her companion. How often he had befriended her, ever since those
first days of shy misery and rapture when she had made her original
appearance in the Ash