ishing news was
beginning to wear thin, and doubt was appearing in spots.

"Sophy Smith! Why, if such a wonderful, beautiful, unexpected thing
had happened to _me_--" Alicia's blue eyes misted. I have known her
since the day she was born, next door to us in Boston, and she is
the only person I have ever seen who can cry and look pretty while
she's doing it; also, she can cry and laugh at the same time, being
Irish. Some foolish people, who have been deceived by Alicia
Gaines's baby stare and complexion, have said she hasn't sense
enough to get in out of a shower of rain. This is, of course, a
libel. But what's the odds, when every male being in sight would
rush to her aid with an umbrella?

After her mother's death I fell heir to Alicia, who, like me, was an
only child, and without relatives. Lately, I'd gotten her into our
filing-department. She didn't belong in a business office, she whose
proper background should have been an adoring husband and the latest
thing in pink-and-white babies.

"But somebody's got to think of stoves and roofs and rats and such,
or there'd be no living in any old house," I reminded her,
practically. "My dear girl, don't you realize that this thing isn't
all beer and skittles?"

Alicia wrinkled her white forehead.

"Consider me, a hardy late-summer plant forced to uproot and
transplant myself to a soil which may not in the least agree with
me. Why, this means changing all my fixed habits, to trot off to
live in an old house that is probably haunted by the cross-grained
ghost of a lady of ninety-nine!"

"If I were a ghost, you'd be the very last person on earth I'd want
to tackle, Sophy," remarked Alicia, dimpling. "And as for that new
soil, why, you'll bloom in it! You--well, Sophy dear, up to now you
have been root-bound; you've never had a chance to grow, much less
to blossom. Now you can do both."

I who was confidential secretary to the Head, looked at the girl who
was admittedly the worst file-clerk on record; and she looked back
at me, nodding her bright head with young wisdom.

"I hope," she said, wistfully, "that there'll be all sorts of lovely
things in your house, Sophy,--old mirrors, old books, old pictures,
old furniture, old china. Lord send you'll find an attic! All my
life I've day-dreamed of finding an attic that's been shut up and
forgotten for ages and ages, and discovering all sorts of lovely
things in all sorts of hiding-places. When I think my day-dream may
c