r silks and laces, had a smooth, round, artfully
jointed arm thrown across Letitia. It was as if each was comforting the
other!

Johnnie picked up the old doll. Somehow she seemed closer and dearer to
him than the new one. Perhaps--who knew?--she, also, was mourning the
absent beloved. (If there was any feeling in her, she had been
inconsolable this long time, what with being cast aside for a grander
rival.) "Well, Letitia," he whispered, "here we are, you and--and me!"

It was growing dark in the kitchen. Besides, no one was there to mark
his weakness and taunt him with it. He put his face against faithful
Letitia's faded dress--that dress which Cis herself had made, pricking
her pink fingers scandalously in the process, and had washed and ironed
season after season. That was it! He loved the old doll the better
because she was a part of Cis.

"Oh, dear Letitia!" he whispered again, and strained the doll to his
heart.

Then he took up Edwarda, who opened her eyes with a sharp click.
Edwarda, favorite of her young owner, smelled adorably--like the tiny
room, like the birthday roses, like apples. And her dainty presence,
exhaling the familiar scent of the dressing-table box, brought Cis even
nearer to him than had Letitia. With a choking exclamation, he caught
the new doll to him along with the old, and held both tight.

Then dropping to the mattress, he laid the pair side by side before
crumpling down with them, digging his nose into one of Edwarda's
fragrant sleeves. The instant her head struck the bed, Edwarda had
clicked her eyes shut, as if quite indifferent to all that had happened
that day (not to speak of the previous night), and had fallen asleep
like a shot. Not so the sterling Letitia, who lay staring, open-eyed, at
the ceiling.

But Johnnie, worn with emotion, weak from yesterday's whipping, sick and
weary from last night's long hours across the table edge, sank into a
deep and merciful and repairing sleep.

CHAPTER XXXVII

UPS AND DOWNS

HE awoke a changed boy. How it had come about, or why, he did not try to
reason; but on opening his gray eyes at dawn, he felt distinctly two
astonishing differences in himself: first, his sorrow over Cis's going
seemed entirely spent, as if it had taken leave of him some time in the
night; second, and more curious than the other, along with that sorrow
had evidently departed all of his old fear of Big Tom!

The fact that Johnnie no longer stood in dread