ut gently, "are you quite, quite sure
that he is kind, and--and--good, and all you could wish him to be?"

Miss Arabella looked at her in childlike wonder, and then her face lit
up with a heavy smile. "Oh, my! there's no fear of him!" she cried
radiantly.

Elsie was silent. She dared not disturb her beautiful faith. "But,
Arabella," she pleaded, "even if you told Susan and Bella and all, when
he came they would have to let you marry him. And I think it would be
better, much better, than to elope. It looks as though you were doing
something wrong--and you're not."

Miss Arabella's head drooped again. She nervously fingered a corner of
the blue silk. "It ain't exactly that," she said shyly, "but I kind of
feel scared about it, Elsie." Her voice sank to a whisper. "You see,
I've got so used to bein' disappointed that I guess I can't stand
anything else for a while," she added, with unconscious pathos. "And I
ain't dead sure that it'll happen, you know. It seems as if it was too
good to be true, and if it didn't"--her face looked suddenly old and
gray--"Susan and William and Ella Anne, an' all the folks, would talk
and _talk_." She shivered. "I can't stand to be talked about, Elsie.
It was just because I was so scared o' bein' talked about that I got
better last fall. And, oh, I want you to make Ella Anne keep still
about my letter, won't you, Elsie, please? And you'll not tell, will
you?"

"No, Arabella, not a soul." She sighed in perplexity. To assist in an
elopement! The staid, earnest upbringing of the country girl, coupled
with her high sense of duty, made her shrink from the very word.

"And the dress, Arabella? Shall I help you make it?"

"That's what I was jist thinkin' about. I can't have it made at home,
'cause Susan an' Bella's in an' out every day. An' you can't have it
here, for Jean an' the boys'll be home soon, an' they'd find out, an'
if Lorry Sawyer was to get a sight of it, she'd remember all she's
forgot. I was thinkin' on the way ever there's jist one woman in the
village would make it an' never tell a soul, an' that's----"

Elsie nodded. "Mrs. Munn."

"Yes. Harriet dressmaked for a long time before Munn died; he wasn't
no more use than Davy. An' she'd make it an' never tell. An' you'd
help a little, wouldn't you, an' see that she made it--kind o'--jist a
little--fashionable, Elsie?"

"Yes, Arabella; oh, yes." The answer was absently given. The girl's
eyes were trou