s
beside her sister and put her arms about her neck.

"You precious old lamb!" she cried, "I know you don't. You couldn't pry
into anybody's secrets if you tried. You couldn't even try. But I
haven't any, dear, and I'll tell you every one of them, and, rather than
see a tear in your dear eyes, I would tell John Lenox that I never
wanted to see him again; and I don't know what you have been thinking,
but I haven't thought so at all" (which last assertion made even Mrs.
Carling laugh), "and I know that I have been teasing and horrid, and if
you won't put me in the closet I will be good and answer every question
like a nice little girl." Whereupon she gave her sister a kiss and
resumed her seat with an air of abject penitence which lasted for a
minute. Then she laughed again, though there was a watery gleam in her
own eyes. Mrs. Carling gave her a look of great love and admiration.

"I ought not to have brought up the subject," she said, "knowing as I do
how you feel about such discussions, but I love you so much that
sometimes I can't help--"

"Alice," exclaimed the girl, "please have the kindness to call me a
selfish P--I--G. It will relieve my feelings."

"But I do not think you are," said Mrs. Carling literally.

"But I am at times," declared Mary, "and you deserve not only to have,
but to be shown, all the love and confidence that I can give you. It's
only this, that sometimes your solicitude makes you imagine things that
do not exist, and you think I am withholding my confidence; and then,
again, I am enough like other people that I don't always know exactly
what I do think. Now, about this matter--"

"Don't say a word about it, dear," her sister interrupted, "unless you
would rather than not."

"I wish to," said Mary. "Of course I am not oblivious of the fact that
Mr. Lenox comes here very often, nor that he seems to like to stay and
talk with me, because, don't you know, if he didn't he could go when you
do, and I don't mind admitting that, as a general thing, I like to have
him stay; but, as I said to you, if it weren't for Julius he would not
come here very often."

"Don't you think," said Mrs. Carling, now on an assured footing, "that
if it were not for you he would not come so often?"

Perhaps Mary overestimated the attraction which her brother-in-law had
for Mr. Lenox, and she smiled slightly as she thought that it was quite
possible. "I suppose," she went on, with a little shrug of the
shoulders, "