opped in after breakfast
to announce that Miss Perkins credited Algie with having the best head
for arithmetic of any boy in her room and came again at noon to suggest
taking Malcolm and Celia for a walk. But though she distributed her
favors with creditable impartiality, she found the baby peculiarly
fascinating. And rather to Persis' surprise, the frail and fretful
little creature, who looked askance even at the kindly Mary, fell under
the spell of the girlish beauty and always had a smile for Diantha.

"Goodness, child, you do look grown up," Persis exclaimed abruptly one
afternoon, as she glanced at the pair snuggled in the depths of the
armchair, Diantha had flung her hat aside. Her face was dreamy as she
looked down at the little head against her shoulder. All her girlish
coquetry, every trace of juvenile mischief, the occasional flashes of
petulance which told that she was her mother's daughter had vanished.
She looked a brooding madonna.

Ordinarily Diantha would have fluttered at the compliment. In her
present preoccupation, it drew from her only a thoughtful smile.

"She's going to sleep," she said, an exquisite softness in her voice.
"How nice and heavy their heads feel when they're sleepy, Miss Persis!"

"Well?"

"I'm going to adopt a lot of children some day. I always was crazy to
have a crowd around. The way I've prayed for a sister," sighed
Diantha, her face temporarily overcast. And then brightening: "When I
get old enough to do as I please, I'll make up for it."

Persis, studying the rapt young face, made no immediate reply. Her
sense of guilty complicity in Diantha's precocious womanhood distracted
her attention from the girl's resentful speech. Apparently her silence
proved stimulating to Diantha's impulse toward confidences.

"Do you know the latest notion mother's got in her head?"

"No."

"She wants to send me off to school somewhere. She talks to father and
talks to him, till I'm afraid she'll tire him into it. Thad West says
any woman can get her way if she never stops talking about it."

Persis regarded her keenly and Diantha's color rose. For no apparent
reason her blush became a conflagration.

"I didn't know you and Thad had much chance to talk things over
nowadays."

"They won't let him come to the house. They say I'm too young."
Diantha laughed mockingly. "And mother was only a little older when
she married father, and she was engaged twice before that."

"I s