ly; "by no means. They are taken care of."

And both Madge and Lois were too simple to know what he meant.

At Mrs. Wishart's, Lois was again helped carefully out and carefully
in, and half carried up-stairs to her own room, whither it was decided
she had better go at once. And there, after being furnished with a bowl
of soup, she was left, while the others went down to tea. So Madge
found her an hour afterwards, sunk in the depths of a great, soft
easy-chair, gazing at the fanciful flames of a kennel coal fire.

"O Madge, it's a dream!" Lois said again languidly, though with plenty
of expression. "I can't believe in the change from Esterbrooke here."

"It's a change from Shampuashuh," Madge returned. "Lois, I didn't know
things could be so pretty. And we have had the most delightful tea, and
something--cakes--Mrs. Wishart calls _wigs_, the best things you ever
saw in your life; but Mr. Dillwyn wouldn't let us send some up to you."

"Mr. Dillwyn!"--

"Yes, he said they were not good for you. He has been just as pleasant
as he could be. I never saw anybody so pleasant. I like Mr. Dillwyn
_very_ much."

"Don't!" said Lois languidly.

"Why?"

"You had better not."

"But why not? You are ungrateful, it seems to me, if you don't like
him."

"I like him," said Lois slowly; "but he belongs to a different world
from ours. The worlds can't come together; so it is best not to like
him too much."

"How do you mean, a different world?"

"O, he's different, Madge! All his thoughts and ways and associations
are unlike ours--a great way off from ours; and must be. It is best as
I said. I guess it is best not to like anybody too much."

With which oracular and superhumanly wise utterance Lois closed her
eyes softly again. Madge, provoked, was about to carry on the
discussion, when, noticing how pale the cheek was which lay against the
crimson chair cushion, and how very delicate the lines of the face, she
thought better of it and was silent. A while later, however, when she
had brought Lois a cup of gruel and biscuit, she broke out on a new
theme.

"What a thing it is, that some people should have so much silver, and
other people so little!"

"What silver are you thinking of?"

"Why, Mrs. Wishart's, to be sure. Who's else? I never saw anything like
it, out of Aladdin's cave. Great urns, and salvers, and cream-jugs, and
sugar-bowls, and cake-baskets, and pitchers, and salt-cellars. The
salt-cellars were lined with