ow skin and
bloodless lips--and she sighed. But she kissed her also, and asked how
she had spent her morning and whether she had come from school this
morning or yesterday afternoon.

When luncheon became the order of the day conversation died out. Dr.
Montague, indeed made two or three attempts at light talk--but Dot was
shy and Alma was nervous and Mrs. Montague was apparently elsewhere in
thought, so that presently silence fell.

Dinner was at seven that night. It was a meal of many courses, several
wines two servants, and finger glasses. And again Dot was perfectly if
silently happy--although the finger glasses (of which she had seen none
before) threw, her off her balance until she had stolen a glance at
Alma to "see how she did," whereupon Dot performed the operation with
infinitely more grace than Alma.

Alma wore a white silk dress and gold sash, and Dorothea white muslin
and gold sash, and the doctor's eyes went from one little whitely clad
maid to the other, smilingly.

The happy look on his small daughter's face pleased him greatly.

His wife often said he neither saw nor heard what was going on around
him, but he had very soon discovered his little girl's supreme
contentment.

He asked Dorothea if she were going away for Christmas and the holidays,
and Dorothea shook her golden head and said, "No; she was going to stay
at home."

Whereupon he asked Alma if she wouldn't like to carry her "dearest
friend" up the mountains with her, and Alma went quite pink with delight
and said--

"Oh, Father! Oh, Thea _dear_!"

And Dot raised her pretty shy eyes and said--

"Oh, Alma!" and then looked at Mrs. Montague as if to ask if such
happiness was possible.

Mrs. Montague laughed.

"I will write and ask your mother," she said, "but we really can't take
'no.'" And she said it so graciously that the tears came into Alma's
eyes.

"It would be _too_ lovely!" said Dot breathlessly.

On Sunday afternoon, just as the evening shadows were stealing out and
the daylight was growing grey, Alma ran into the little blue
sitting-room, her great eyes luminous.

"Oh, Thea _darling!_" she said, and then she stopped in surprise. Only a
little while ago Dot had tripped upstairs, her hair in a golden plait
down her back, her dress not so low as her boot-tops by quite three
inches.

And now! She was sitting in an easy chair, her dress skirt lowered till
it reached the floor, her hair loosely done up on the top of her h