he very last leaf;
she could thank innocently "for everybody"; but she knew very well
what the last leaf, falling to her to keep, would stand for.

In years and years to come, Sylvie will never see climbing ferns
again, without a feeling as of all the delicate beauty and
significance of the world gathered together in a heap and laid into
her lap.

She had seen the dollar that Rodney paid for them, flutter down
beside the window as the car moved on, and the boy spring forward to
catch it. Rodney Sherrett earned his dollars now. It was one of his
very, very own that he spent for her that day. A girl feels a
strange thrill when she sees for the first time, a fragment of the
life she cares for given, representatively, thus, for her.

It is useless to analyze and explain. Sylvie did not stop to do it,
neither did Rodney; but that ride, that little giving and taking,
were full of parable and heart-telegraphy between them. That October
afternoon was a long, beautiful dream; a dream that must come true,
some time. Yet Rodney said to his aunt, as he bade her good-by that
evening, at her own door (he had to go back to the station to take
the night train up),--"Why shouldn't we have _this_ piece of our
lives as well as the rest, Auntie? Why should two years be cribbed
off? There won't be any too much of it, and there won't be any of it
just like this."

Aunt Euphrasia only stooped down from the doorstep, and kissed him
on his cheek, saying nothing.

But to herself she said, after he had gone,--

"I don't see why, either. They would be so happy, waiting it out
together. And there never _is_ any time like this time. How is
anybody sure of the rest of it?"

Aunt Euphrasia knew. She had not been sure of the rest of hers.

CHAPTER XX.

"WANTED."

The half of course and half critical way in which Mrs. Argenter took
possession of the gray parlor would have been funny, if it had not
been painful, to Sylvie, feeling almost wrong and wickedly deceitful
in betraying her mother, through ignorance of the real arrangements,
into a false and unsuitable attitude; and to Desire, for Sylvie's
sake.

She thought it would do nicely if the windows weren't too low, and
if the little stove-grate could be replaced by an open wood fire.
Couldn't she have a Franklin, or couldn't the fire-place be
unbricked?

"I don't think you'll mind, with cannel coal," said Sylvie. "That is
so cheerful; and there won't be any smoke, for Miss Led