to you,
for it is just what your loving old Dorry is thinking this night.

"Good-night, my _brother_. In my letter, sent last Saturday, I told you
how delighted Uncle and I were with your descriptions of London and
Liverpool.

"I show Uncle your letters to me, but he does not return the compliment;
that is, he has read to me only parts of those you have written to him.
May be he will let me read them through _now_, since I know 'the
important business.' Keep up a good heart, Don, and do not mind my
whining a little in this letter. Now that I am going to sign my name, I
feel as if every doubt I have expressed is almost wicked. So, good-night
again, dear Donald, and ever so much love from your own faithful sister,

DORRY.

"P. S.--Uncle said this afternoon, when I begged him to start with me
right away to join you in Europe, that if it were not for some matters
needing his presence here, we might go; but that he cannot possibly
leave at present. Dear Uncle! I'll be glad when morning comes, so that I
may put my arms around his neck and be his own cheerful Dorry again.
Liddy does not know yet that I have heard anything. I forgot to say that
Mr. and Mrs. Manning are going to California, and that Josie is to spend
two months with me. Won't that be a comfort? How strange it will seem to
have a secret from her! But Uncle says I must wait.

"P. S. again.--Be sure to answer this in English. I know we agreed to
correspond in French, for the sake of the practice, but I have no heart
for it now. It is too hard work. Good-night, once more. The storm is
over. Your loving

DORRY."

CHAPTER XXXI.

ONLY A BIT OF RAG.

DORRY'S long letter reached Donald two weeks later, as he sat in his
room at a hotel in Aix-la-Chapelle. He had been feeling lonely and
rather discouraged, notwithstanding the many sights that had interested
him during the day. And after many disappointments and necessary delays
in the prosecution of the business that had taken him across the sea, he
had begun to feel that, perhaps, it would be just as well to sail for
home and let things go on as before. Dorry, he thought, need never know
of the doubts and anxieties that had troubled Uncle George and himself,
and for his part he would rest in his belief that he and she were
Wolcott Reed's own children, joint heirs to the estate, and, as L