ul's face, and abandoning her
boat to the mercy of the waves, she walked out of her apparently perilous
position and caught Paul's arm.

"What is the matter?" she asked anxiously. "They haven't made the
holidays shorter, have they?" This was always one of her greatest fears.

"Don't be silly!" snapped Paul crossly. "As if they could. Why, if they
were to try to I'd refuse to go."

Stella looked awed, but anxious. "Do tell me, Paul, what is it!
Is father cross with you?"

At these words a recollection of his father's gentleness and trouble came
over him, and he felt a little ashamed and sorry. "No, no," he said,
sinking into a chair by the table, and letting his head fall forward on
his arms, "I wouldn't mind that so much if--if, oh, it's awfully hard
lines, it--"

Stella waited patiently. She was a sensible little woman, and not such a
baby as Paul chose to consider her. Because she had meals with Michael in
the nursery, that she might be a companion for him, Paul was in the habit
of looking on her as of Michael's age, and understanding. He forgot that
at her age he had considered himself old enough to quit the nursery meals
for the dining-room, and had done so too. Stella was four years older
than her younger brother, and there was a great deal of the little mother
in the way she cared for him. But Paul, boy-like, saw only that she
joined in Michael's games, and was apparently quite content, so he rather
despised her.

"What is it, Paul? Do tell me!" she pleaded at last. She longed to put
her arms about him, and try to comfort him; but since he had been at
school he had grown, as does many a boy, to object to endearments, and to
think them something to be ashamed of. Her heart grew heavy with a
nameless fear. Michael, too, ceased to complain of Stella's having left
her boat and her game, and looked with wondering eyes at his
grief-stricken elder brother. It was so unusual to see Paul cast down
like this.

"We aren't going to Norway, after all," said Paul--he spoke gruffly to try
to conceal the sob in his throat,--"and I call it beastly hard lines.
It isn't as though it would cost so very much more than any other holiday,
and father knows we have never been so far before, and how we were looking
forward to it, and that I--"

"Not going to Norway!" cried Stella, in an accent almost of relief.
"Oh, is that all? I was afraid something dreadful had happened."
She could not help the feeling, she ha