. "Still, you deserve a
laurel wreath for that enthusiastic wish. Will a humble offering of
roses be unworthy of notice, fair Goddess of Liberty?" and a shower of
sweet-scented blossoms fell over Dorris' head and shoulders.

"O Mr. Endicott! goddesses are not crowned so unceremoniously. Imagine
Paris pelting Venus with that apple that made so much trouble," says
Dorris, glancing up half angrily, half mirthfully, at the tall intruder
leaning so easily against the window. "I am almost minded to make you
hold this skein of yarn, as a penance, while I wind it."

"Alas! she descends from a goddess to the most prosaic of mortals,"
sighs Endicott; then springing through the low window, "I am ready to
obey; but that skein is imposing. What _is_ its destiny?"

"And why, oh, why this inseparable devotion to that unfeeling wheel?"
adds L'Estrange. "I came for a stroll, and, _voila!_ she cannot leave
her spinning. Is it a trousseau, that must be ready when some lover
comes home from the war?"

Dorris's bright face saddens suddenly, the perfect mouth loses its arch
curves, and a shadow creeps into the brown eyes as the long lashes droop
over them.

"The skein is to be knit into socks for the soldiers," she says simply;
"and as for my wheel, I love it because it is connected with one who has
been more to me than any lover. 'Tis but a homely story, but I will tell
it to such old friends as you. I need not tell you that I have a brother
in the army, but you do not--you cannot--know how dear he is to me, how
he has taken the place of both father and mother. It seems as if brother
and sister had never been bound by ties so close, and when this war came
upon us I watched him day by day, knowing well the thought in his heart,
and trembling for what I knew _must_ come; and yet when Rex came to me
and said, 'Little sister, my country needs me: can you be brave, and
bear it, if I go?' oh, then it seemed to me that I could not bear it!
But I thought of the brave Lafayette leaving his home and loved ones to
fight for us, a foreign nation, and my heart smote me that _I_ could not
be willing to offer my mite for my own dear country, and I bade my
brother, 'Go, and God-speed.' It was only a few weeks before that he had
given me this wheel, and almost his last words were, as he stood smiling
in the door-way, 'Remember, Dorris, I shall expect to find on my return
one dozen handkerchiefs spun and woven by yourself and that wonderful
wheel.' I ha