"You will have to grow a good deal bigger and older before you are able
to fill that gown, my little one," he said.

"That is not the way I do things," said Miriam, severely. "I shall make
the gown fit me."

Ralph was about to say that it would be a pity to cut down and alter that
picturesque piece of old-fashioned attire into an ordinary garment, and
that it would be well to keep it as a family relic, or to give it away to
some one who could wear it as it was, but Miriam's manner assured him
that she was extremely sensitive on the subject of this gown, and he
considered it wise to offer no further opinion about it. So he went about
his affairs, and Miriam, having resumed her ordinary dress, went out with
her cook-book to a bench under a tree on the lawn. She never stayed in
the house when it was possible to be out of doors.

"I wish I could find out," she said to herself, "what Dora Bannister
intended to make for Ralph out of raspberries. Whatever it is, I know I
can make it just as well, and I want to do it all myself before the new
cook comes. It could not have been jam," she said, as she turned over
the leaves; "for Ralph does not care much for jam, and he would not have
told her he liked that. And then there is jelly; but it must take a long
time to make jelly, and I do not believe she would undertake to give him
that for dinner, made from raspberries picked this morning. Besides, I
cannot imagine Ralph saying he wanted jelly for his dinner. Well, well!"
she exclaimed aloud, as she stopped to read a recipe, "they do make
tarts out of raspberries! That must have been it, for Ralph is
desperately fond of every kind of pastry. I will go into the house this
minute, and make him some raspberry tarts. We shall have them for
supper, even if they give him the nightmare. I am not going to have him
say again that he wished the new cook, as he kept calling Dora
Bannister, had stayed a little longer."

Alas! at dinner time Ralph had been guilty of that indiscretion. Without
exactly knowing it, he had missed in the meal a certain very pleasant
element, which had been put into the supper and breakfast by Dora's
desire to gratify his especial tastes. While he missed their visitor in
many other ways, he alluded to her premature departure only in connection
with their domestic affairs.

But so far as Miriam was concerned, he could have done nothing worse
than this. To have heard her brother say that Dora Bannister was the m