nt people seem when one comes to know
them. Now from one or two things which you have said, and an admission
that Frank made a year ago, I felt I should be sure to hate his mother,
and now I think she is perfectly lovely."

"So she is to those she likes," answered Albert, "but if you had not
shown the tact you have, my dear sis, I am not sure you would now be
praising her. You carried her heart by storm last evening, as well as
the rest of the company, and you deserved it, for I never heard you sing
so well."

"I am glad I didn't break down, anyway," she replied, "for when I
touched the piano my heart seemed in my mouth."

"Yes, and in your voice, too," he replied with pride, "and that is what
carried us all away."

For an hour they discussed the Nasons, while Albert noticed his sister
avoided any mention of Frank, and then he said: "Well, sis, which of the
rents we have looked at do you think I best engage and when will you be
ready to move?"

Alice was silent and for a few minutes she pursed her lips and looked at
the chilly shipwreck scene near her as if it contained a revelation.

"I am not so sure," she answered finally, "that we should make the
change at present. If I were certain your beautiful waif of the sea
would adhere to her filial resolution, it would be different, but I am
not. If you secure this legacy for her that you told me about and she
donates it to those old people, as you say she intends to, why the next
thing will be an invitation to my dear brother's wedding, and that is
one reason why I hesitate to make this change. Another is that I do not
think it would be good for Aunt Susan. She says she is ready and
willing, but when she has left all the associations of her life behind,
she will just sit and grieve her poor old heart away in silence."

Albert did not and could not answer all these surmises, and to a certain
extent he felt that his sister was right. He certainly meant to coax
Telly to marry him, even if she insisted on spending most of her time
where she felt her duty called her. Then he had felt all along that
Alice might be persuaded to become one of the Nason family, though his
Thanksgiving visit had about dispelled that idea. As for Aunt Susan, if
the proposed change was not likely to be a permanent one, it would not
be best to make it at all. Deliberating thus he sat in silence for a
time, and leisurely puffed smoke rings in the air as he studied the
ceiling. Finally an idea cam