gh her chances for it had then looked so slender.

The morning after the sociable, Tillie, curled up in bed, was roused by
the rattle of the milk cart down the street. Then a neighbor boy came
down the sidewalk outside her window, singing "Casey Jones" as if he
hadn't a care in the world. By this time Tillie was wide awake. The
twin's question, and the subsequent laughter, came back with a faint
twinge. Tillie knew she was short-sighted about facts, but this
time--Why, there were her scrapbooks, full of newspaper and magazine
articles about Thea, and half-tone cuts, snap-shots of her on land and
sea, and photographs of her in all her parts. There, in her parlor, was
the phonograph that had come from Mr. Ottenburg last June, on Thea's
birthday; she had only to go in there and turn it on, and let Thea speak
for herself. Tillie finished brushing her white hair and laughed as she
gave it a smart turn and brought it into her usual French twist. If
Moonstone doubted, she had evidence enough: in black and white, in
figures and photographs, evidence in hair lines on metal disks. For one
who had so often seen two and two as making six, who had so often
stretched a point, added a touch, in the good game of trying to make the
world brighter than it is, there was positive bliss in having such deep
foundations of support. She need never tremble in secret lest she might
sometime stretch a point in Thea's favor.--Oh, the comfort, to a soul
too zealous, of having at last a rose so red it could not be further
painted, a lily so truly auriferous that no amount of gilding could
exceed the fact!

Tillie hurried from her bedroom, threw open the doors and windows, and
let the morning breeze blow through her little house.

In two minutes a cob fire was roaring in her kitchen stove, in five she
had set the table. At her household work Tillie was always bursting out
with shrill snatches of song, and as suddenly stopping, right in the
middle of a phrase, as if she had been struck dumb. She emerged upon the
back porch with one of these bursts, and bent down to get her butter and
cream out of the ice-box. The cat was purring on the bench and the
morning-glories were thrusting their purple trumpets in through the
lattice-work in a friendly way. They reminded Tillie that while she was
waiting for the coffee to boil she could get some flowers for her
breakfast table. She looked out uncertainly at a bush of sweet-briar
that grew at the edge of her y