o did papa."

"Yes," the lady said, looking at Editha's lips in nature and then at her
lips in art, and giving an empirical touch to them in the picture. "But
how dreadful of her! How perfectly--excuse me--how _vulgar_!"

A light broke upon Editha in the darkness which she felt had been
without a gleam of brightness for weeks and months. The mystery that had
bewildered her was solved by the word; and from that moment she rose
from grovelling in shame and self-pity, and began to live again in the
ideal.

The Stout Miss Hopkins's Bicycle

BY OCTAVE THANET

There was a skeleton in Mrs. Margaret Ellis's closet; the same skeleton
abode also in the closet of Miss Lorania Hopkins.

The skeleton--which really does not seem a proper word--was the dread of
growing stout. They were more afraid of flesh than of sin. Yet they were
both good women. Mrs. Ellis regularly attended church, and could always
be depended on to show hospitality to convention delegates, whether
clerical or lay; she was a liberal subscriber to every good work; she
was almost the only woman in the church aid society that never lost her
temper at the soul-vexing time of the church fair; and she had a larger
clientele of regular pensioners than any one in town, unless it were her
friend Miss Hopkins, who was "so good to the poor" that never a tramp
slighted her kitchen. Miss Hopkins was as amiable as Mrs. Ellis, and
always put her name under that of Mrs. Ellis, with exactly the same
amount, on the subscription papers. She could have given more, for she
had the larger income; but she had no desire to outshine her friend,
whom she admired as the most charming of women.

Mrs. Ellis, indeed, was agreeable as well as good, and a pretty woman to
the bargain, if she did not choose to be weighed before people. Miss
Hopkins often told her that she was not really stout; she merely had a
plump, trig little figure. Miss Hopkins, alas! was really stout. The two
waged a warfare against the flesh equal to the apostle's in vigor,
although so much less deserving of praise.

Mrs. Ellis drove her cook to distraction with divers dieting systems,
from Banting's and Dr. Salisbury's to the latest exhortations of some
unknown newspaper prophet. She bought elaborate gymnastic appliances,
and swung dumb-bells and rode imaginary horses and propelled imaginary
boats. She ran races with a professional trainer, and she studied the
principles of Delsarte, and solemnly whirled