oes seem without papa! our dear, dear papa!" was
Gracie's waking exclamation. "I wish he could live at home all the time
like other children's fathers do! When will he come again, Lulu?"

"I don't know, Gracie; I don't believe anybody knows," returned Lulu
sorrowfully. "But you have no occasion to feel half as badly about it as
I."

"Why not?" cried Grace, a little indignantly, even her gentle nature
aroused at the apparent insinuation that he was more to Lulu than to
herself; "you don't love him a bit better than I do."

"Maybe not; but Mamma Vi is more to you than she is to me; though that
wasn't what I was thinking of. I was only thinking that you had been a
good child to him all the time he has been at home, while I was so very,
very naughty that--"

Lulu broke off suddenly and went on with, her dressing in silence.

"That what?" asked Grace.

"That I grieved him very much and spoiled half his pleasure," Lulu said
in a choking voice. Then turning suddenly toward her sister, her face
flushing hotly, her eyes full of tears, bitterly ashamed of what she was
moved to tell, yet with a heart aching so for sympathy that she hardly
knew how to keep it back, "Gracie, if I tell you something will you
never, _never, never_ breathe a single word of it to a living soul?"

Grace, who was seated on the floor putting on her shoes and stockings,
looked up at her sister in silent astonishment.

"Come, answer," exclaimed Lulu impetuously; "do you promise? I know if
you make a promise you'll keep it. But I won't tell you without, for I
wouldn't have Mamma Vi, or Max, or anybody else but you know, for all
the world."

"Not papa?"

"Oh, Gracie, papa knows; it's a secret between him and me--only--only I
have a right to tell you if I choose."

"I'm glad he knows, because I couldn't promise not to tell him if he
asked me and said I must. Yes, I promise, Lulu. What is it?"

Lulu had finished her dressing, and dropping down on the carpet beside
Grace she began, half averting her face and speaking in low, hurried
tones. "You remember that morning we were all going to the 'squantum' I
changed my dress and put on a white one, and because of that, and
something I said to Max that papa overheard, he said I must stay at
home; and he ordered me to take off that dress immediately. Well, I
disobeyed him; I walked round the town in the dress before I took it
off, and instead of staying at home I went in to bathe, and took a walk
in the a