the bass
a faulty enunciation; at dinner the soup was insipid, and the dessert a
disappointment; afterwards, in the evening, callers had stayed too long.

Mrs. Howland was in her own room, on the point of preparing for bed,
when there came a knock at her chamber door,

"Please, Aunt Ellen, may I come in?"

"Certainly, my dear," called Mrs. Howland, hastening across the room.

Kate stepped inside, closed the door, and placed her back against it.

"I'll give it up," she began, half laughing, half crying. "I never,
never would have believed it! Don't ever say 'crumbs' or 'plates' to
me again as long as you live--_please_! I believe I never can even
_see_ the things again with any peace or comfort. I am going to
try--try--Oh, how I'm going to try!--but, auntie, I think it's a
hopeless case!" The next instant she had whisked the door open and had
vanished out of sight.

"'Hopeless'?" Mrs. Howland was whispering to herself the next day, as
she passed through the hall. "'Hopeless'? Oh, no, I think not." And
she smiled as she heard her niece's voice in the drawing-room saying:

"High studded, Eben?--these rooms? Yes, perhaps; but, after all, it
doesn't matter so much, being a drawing-room--and one does get better
air, you know!"

A Four-Footed Faith and a Two

On Monday Rathburn took the dog far up the trail. Stub was no
blue-ribbon, petted dog of records and pedigree; he was a
vicious-looking little yellow cur of mixed ancestry and bad
habits--that is, he had been all this when Rathburn found him six
months before and championed his cause in a quarrel with a crowd of
roughs in Mike Swaney's saloon. Since then he had developed into a
well-behaved little beast with a pair of wistful eyes that looked
unutterable love, and a tail that beat the ground, the floor, or the
air in joyous welcome whenever Rathburn came in sight. He was part
collie, sharp-nosed and prick-eared, and his undersized little body
still bore the marks of the precarious existence that had been his
before Rathburn had befriended him.

Rathburn had rescued the dog that day in the saloon more to thwart the
designs of Pete Mulligan, the head of the gang and an old enemy, than
for any compassion for the dog itself; but after he had taken the
little animal home he rather enjoyed the slavish devotion which--in the
dog's mind--seemed evidently to be the only fit return for so great a
service as had been done him. For some months, therefor