er term, she used it
sometimes with a little flutter of the heart. But those innocent
endearments that a woman keeps for her lover's portrait--to make amends
for not proffering them of free will to the poor fellow himself--these
it would have shocked her to imagine. She never touched the picture,
save reverently to dust it, to take it down when she went away, to
replace it in its station when she returned. But now, trembling, yet not
blushing, she took the picture into her hands. She looked long into its
eyes; she kissed it with a light and timid kiss, and swiftly hid the
smiling face against her heart, pressing the frame in both hands, and
touching it with her cheek bent over it, while she whispered: "You _did_
tell me. You came back and told me. I love you. Max, my knight--my
husband!"

THE STOUT MISS HOPKINS' BICYCLE

There was a skeleton in Mrs. Margaret Ellis' closet; the same skeleton
abode also in the closet of Miss Lorania Hopkins.

The skeleton--which really does not seem a proper word--was the dread of
growing stout. They were more afraid of flesh than of sin. Yet they were
both good women. Mrs. Ellis regularly attended church, and could always
be depended on to show hospitality to convention delegates, whether
clerical or lay; she was a liberal subscriber to every good work; she
was almost the only woman in the church aid society that never lost her
temper at the soul-vexing time of the church fair; and she had a larger
clientele of regular pensioners than any one in town, unless it were her
friend, Miss Hopkins, who was "so good to the poor" that never a tramp
slighted her kitchen. Miss Hopkins was as amiable as Mrs. Ellis, and
always put her name under that of Mrs. Ellis, with exactly the same
amount, on the subscription papers. She could have given more, for she
had the larger income; but she had no desire to outshine her friend,
whom she admired as the most charming of women.

Mrs. Ellis, indeed, was agreeable as well as good, and a pretty woman to
the bargain, if she did not choose to be weighed before people. Miss
Hopkins often told her that she was not really stout; she merely was a
plump, trim little figure. Miss Hopkins, alas! was really stout. The two
waged a warfare against the flesh equal to the apostle's in vigor,
although so much less deserving of praise.

Mrs. Ellis drove her cook to distraction with divers dieting systems,
from Banting's and Doctor Salisbury's to the latest exhort