sity, and found replies to
all Mrs. Lambert's gentle, persistent questioning. Tom, too, claimed her
attention by all sorts of dexterous wiles. She must look at him, and
thank him, when he found that screen for her; she could not disregard
him when he was so solicitous about the draft from the window, so
anxious to bring her another cushion.

"I did not know you were such a ladies' man, Tom," observed Dr. Lambert
presently, in a tone that made Tom retreat with rather a foolish
expression.

With all his love for his children, Dr. Lambert was sometimes capable of
a smooth sarcasm. Tom felt as though he had been officious; had, in
fact, made a fool of himself, and drew off into the background. His
father was often hard on him, Tom said to himself, in an aggrieved way,
and yet he was only doing his duty, as a son of the house, in waiting on
this fascinating young lady.

"Poor boy, he is very young!" thought Edna, who noticed this by-play
with some amusement; "but he will grow older some day, and he is very
good-looking;" and then she listened with a pretty show of interest to a
story Dr. Lambert was telling her of when he was snowed up in Scotland
as a boy.

When Bessie returned she found them all in good spirits, and her
fellow-traveller laughing and talking as though she had known them for
years; even Tom's brief sulkiness had vanished, and, unmindful of his
father's caustic tongue, he had again ventured to join the charmed
circle.

It was quite late before the girls retired to rest, and as Edna followed
Bessie up the broad, low staircase, while Tom lighted them from below,
she called out gayly. "Good-night, Mr. Lambert; it was worth while
being snowed up in the Sheen Valley to make such nice friends, and to
enjoy such a pleasant evening."

Edna really meant what she said, for the moment; she was capable of
these brief enthusiasms. Pleasantness of speech, that specious coinage
of conventionality, was as the breath of life to her. Her girlish vanity
was gratified by the impression she had made on the Lambert family, and
even Tom's crude, boyish admiration was worth something.

"To be all things to all men" is sometimes taken by vain, worldly people
in a very different sense from that the apostle intended. Girls of Edna
Sefton's caliber--impressionable, vivacious, egotistical, and capable of
a thousand varying moods--will often take their cue from other people,
and become grave with the grave, and gay with the gay,