he inner life of the
other. No confidences were given in the deep matters of the heart,
no sign except a blush over a sly allusion to some one who had been
"attentive." If you had stolen a look into the workbasket or the secret
bureau-drawer, you might have found a treasured note, a bit of ribbon, a
rosebud, some token of tenderness or of friendship that was growing
old with the priestess who cherished it. Did they not love flowers, and
pets, and had they not a passion for children? Were there not moonlight
evenings when they sat silent and musing on the stone steps, watching
the shadows and the dancing gleams on the swift river, when the air
was fragrant with the pink and the lilac? Not melancholy this, nor
poignantly sad, but having in it nevertheless something of the pathos
of life unfulfilled. And was there not sometimes, not yet habitually,
coming upon these faces, faces plain and faces attractive, the shade of
renunciation?

Phil loved Alice devotedly. She was his confidante, his defender, but
he feared more the disapproval of her sweet eyes when he had done wrong
than the threatened punishment of his uncle.

"I only meant to be gone just a little while," Phil went on to say.

"And you were away the whole afternoon. It is a pity the days are so
short. And you don't know what you lost."

"No great, I guess."

"Celia and her mother were here. They stayed all the afternoon."

"Celia Howard? Did she wonder where I was?"

"I don't know. She didn't say anything about it. What a dear little
thing she is!"

"And she can say pretty cutting things."

"Oh, can she? Perhaps you'd better run down to the village before dark
and take her these flowers."

"I'm not going. I'd rather you should have the flowers." And Phil spoke
the truth this time.

Celia, who was altogether too young to occupy seriously the mind of a
lad of twelve, had nevertheless gained an ascendancy over him because of
her willful, perverse, and sometimes scornful ways, and because she was
different from the other girls of the school. She had read many more
books than Phil, for she had access to a library, and she could tell
him much of a world that he only heard of through books and newspapers,
which latter he had no habit of reading. He liked, therefore, to be
with Celia, not withstanding her little airs of superiority, and if she
patronized him, as she certainly did, probably the simple-minded young
gentleman, who was unconsciously bred in the