could say.

"I know I hain't done by ye like a brother," said Lucas, anxious to
get his self-imposed humiliation over, "and I'm sorry, and I'd like to
begin over again."

"I'm just as much a transgressor as you be," said Armida, anxious
to spare him. "If I hadn't said what I did, I 'spose you'd married
Ianthe, and like as not had a family round ye."

"I don't know as I care _now_," said Lucas; "I have felt hard to ye;
but I see Ianthe last March"--he laughed--"and I didn't mourn much
that her name wa'n't Huxter. But that's neither here nor there. If
you feel as if you could git along with two old brothers to look after
instead of one, and overlook what's passed--"

"I'd be glad to, Lucas, if you won't lay up anything against me."

"Well, then;" and coming to her side Lucas bent over her, and, to her
great surprise, kissed her. Turning away before she could return the
kiss, he opened the back door and called to Theodore.

As Theodore came in, Lucas said: "If you had a shawl round ye, Armidy,
wouldn't you like to git out a minute before breakfast?" and without
waiting for an answer, he brought her shawl and wrapped it round her,
then put on her bonnet.

"Can't you and I," he said to Theodore, "make a chair and take her
out? You hain't forgot sence you left school, hev you?"

Locking their hands together they formed what school-children call a
chair, and lifting Armida between them, carried her through the hall,
out at the front door, down the walk to the gate, and turned round,
while Theodore bade his sister look up at the house. Armida obeyed.
She saw the house glistening with paint, her side of it as white as
Lucas's, and blinds adorning her front windows, while the front porch,
with new-laid floor and steps and bristling with brackets, was, in her
eyes, the most imposing of entrances.

Could it be true? she asked herself, and shut her eyes; then glanced
again, then looked at her brothers, who were both silent, Theodore
smiling with joy, while Lucas looked gravely down at her.

"Oh, Lucas!" she cried, throwing her arms around his neck, "you done
this for me!"

"I _told_ you I was sorry, Armidy," he said.

SCIENTIFIC KITE-FLYING.

BY CLEVELAND MOFFETT.

On the long peninsula that separates New York Bay from Newark Bay,
there is, among other things, a red house by an open field, in which
lives the king of kite-flyers. Every one in Bayonne, the town which
covers this peninsula, knows the red house