."

"You will," eagerly, "really?"

"Yes, really. I will stand your friend," say Kit, solemnly, feeling now
that, even if the old gods have denied her an intimate acquaintance with
them, still they have devoted her to the service of Cupid, and have
secretly commanded her to help on the machinations of his naughty little
highness.

"Then will you tell her I want to see her--_here, now_--for only a bare
second if she so wills it? Will you tell her this from me? Dear Kit,
_sweet_ Kit, I entreat you to do this."

"Oh! how sweet I am when you want me to do something for you!" says she,
with a little smile. "There! I can see through you as clearly as though
you were crystal; but I like you all the same. You must have some good
in you to fall in love with my Monica."

"Others can fall in love with her, too," returns he, with moody
jealousy.

"Ah, yes! I saw that," says Kit, lifting her hands excitedly.

"Who could fail to see it? Who could fail to love her?" says Desmond,
sadly. Then, being in such very poor case, and looking sorrowfully for
comfort from any source, however small, he says, nervously,--

"Kit, answer me truthfully--you have sworn to be my friend: tell me,
then, which do _you_ count the better man,--him, or me?"

But that a sense of honor forbids him to pry into his love's secret
thoughts, he would have asked whom _she_ counted the better man.

"You," says Kit, calmly. "I have no doubt about it. I _hate_ fat men,
and--and so does Monica. I have heard her say so, over and over again."

"Oh, Kit! what a dear little girl you are!" says Mr. Desmond, with
grateful fervor.

"Well, I'm glad you like me," says Kit, "because"--frankly--"I like you.
It was very good of you to lend that gun to Terry; I haven't forgotten
that, though, goodness knows, I only hope he won't do himself to death
with it" (she delights in old-world phrases such as this); "and I like
you, too, for loving Monica. Isn't she--" laying her hand upon his arm,
and looking trustfully into his eyes,--"_isn't_ she pretty?"

"She is like an angel," says Desmond, feeling all his heart go out to
the fragile, ethereal-looking child before him, as he listens to her
praises of her sister.

"Or a saint, perhaps. Monica is a saintly name. Was she not the mother
of St. Augustine?" says Kit, quickly. After the old gods, passion for
the saints, and their lilies and roses and fiery trials, animates her
childish bosom. "Oh! and that reminded me," she s