free to take a new color in the sun.

Adam Ladd looked at her in a way that made her put her hands over her
face and laugh through them shyly as she said: "I know what you are
thinking, Mr. Aladdin,--that my dress is an inch longer than last year,
and my hair different; but I'm not nearly a young lady yet; truly I'm
not. Sixteen is a month off still, and you promised not to give me up
till my dress trails. If you don't like me to grow old, why don't you
grow young? Then we can meet in the halfway house and have nice times.
Now that I think about it," she continued, "that's just what you've
been doing all along. When you bought the soap, I thought you were
grandfather Sawyer's age; when you danced with me at the flag-raising,
you seemed like my father; but when you showed me your mother's
picture, I felt as if you were my John, because I was so sorry for you."

"That will do very well," smiled Adam; "unless you go so swiftly that
you become my grandmother before I really need one. You are studying
too hard, Miss Rebecca Rowena!"

"Just a little," she confessed. "But vacation comes soon, you know."

"And are you going to have a good rest and try to recover your dimples?
They are really worth preserving."

A shadow crept over Rebecca's face and her eyes suffused. "Don't be
kind, Mr. Aladdin, I can't bear it;--it's--it's not one of my dimply
days!" and she ran in at the seminary gate, and disappeared with a
farewell wave of her hand.

Adam Ladd wended his way to the principal's office in a thoughtful
mood. He had come to Wareham to unfold a plan that he had been
considering for several days. This year was the fiftieth anniversary of
the founding of the Wareham schools, and he meant to tell Mr. Morrison
that in addition to his gift of a hundred volumes to the reference
library, he intended to celebrate it by offering prizes in English
composition, a subject in which he was much interested. He wished the
boys and girls of the two upper classes to compete; the award to be
made to the writers of the two best essays. As to the nature of the
prizes he had not quite made up his mind, but they would be substantial
ones, either of money or of books.

This interview accomplished, he called upon Miss Maxwell, thinking as
he took the path through the woods, "Rose-Red-Snow-White needs the
help, and since there is no way of my giving it to her without causing
remark, she must earn it, poor little soul! I wonder if my money is
alw