she sat was piled high with
books--old books, evidently well read and well-bred books, classics of
fiction and verse every one of them, and all bearing on the flyleaf
the name of Sidney Richmond, thereby meaning not the girl at the
table, but her college-bred young father who had died the day before
she was born. Her mother had died the day after, and Sidney thereupon
had come into the hands of good Aunt Jane, with those books for her
dowry, since nothing else was left after the expenses of the double
funeral had been paid.

One of the books had Sidney Richmond's name printed on the title-page
instead of written on the flyleaf. It was a thick little volume of
poems, published in his college days--musical, unsubstantial, pretty
little poems, every one of which the girl Sidney loved and knew by
heart.

Sidney dropped her pointed chin in her hands and looked dreamily out
into the moonlit night, while she thought her letter out a little more
fully before beginning to write. Her big brown eyes were full of
wistfulness and romance; for Sidney was romantic, albeit a faithful
and understanding acquaintance with her father's books had given to
her romance refinement and reason, and the delicacy of her own nature
had imparted to it a self-respecting bias.

Presently she began to write, with a flush of real excitement on her
face. In the middle of things the baby choked on a small twist spool
and Sidney had to catch him up by the heels and hold him head downward
until the trouble was ejected. Then she had to soothe him, and finally
write the rest of her letter holding him on one arm and protecting the
epistle from the grabs of his sticky little fingers. It was certainly
letter-writing under difficulties, but Sidney seemed to deal with them
mechanically. Her soul and understanding were elsewhere.

Four years before, when Sidney was sixteen, still calling herself a
schoolgirl by reason of the fact that she could be spared to attend
school four months in the winter when work was slack, she had been
much interested in the "Maple Leaf" department of the Montreal weekly
her uncle took. It was a page given over to youthful Canadians and
filled with their contributions in the way of letters, verses, and
prize essays. Noms de plume were signed to these, badges were sent to
those who joined the Maple Leaf Club, and a general delightful sense
of mystery pervaded the department.

Often a letter concluded with a request to the club memb