d a
hearing, "I shouldn't know what in the world to do with so much
money,--some rich people don't, they say,--and I've got plenty of
ideas to last us for years to come. Then, just as they begin to give
out, you'll have got to be a mining engineer, with your pockets
cram-full of money, and you'll have to support me for the rest of my
life. So I don't see but that I'm getting the best of the bargain,
after all!"

It all seemed perfectly natural to Dan. This sister of his had always
lent a hand when he needed it. Of course he would accept her help, and
let the future, the glorious, inexhaustible future straighten out the
account between them. He did not express himself even in his inmost
thoughts in any such high-flown manner as this. He simply gave an
Indian war-whoop, administered to Polly a portentous hug, and declared
for the hundredth time, "Polly, you _beat the world!_"

When everything was thus amicably settled and Dan had agreed to "give
notice" in his capacity as Mercury, the following day, Polly said:
"You won't mind being poor, will you, Dan? You don't wish we were
rich, do you?"

"Rich? Why, we _are_ rich!"

"But, Dan, if any one came along and offered you a lot of money, say a
thousand dollars a year, you wouldn't take it, would you?"

"Do you mean a stranger, Polly, some one we hadn't any claim on?"

"Yes; but somebody who had such a lot he wouldn't miss it. Would you
take it, Dan? Say, would you take it?"

"What a goose you are, Polly! Of course I wouldn't take it! I would
rather go back to the Augaeans for the rest of my life!"

On the evening of that momentous Christmas Day, our two young people
had out their Latin books and began industriously to polish up their
somewhat rusty acquirements in that classic tongue. A year ago they
might not have regarded this as precisely a holiday pastime, but their
ideas had undergone a great change since then.

They sat at the little centre-table, the ruddy head and the black one
close together in the lamp-light, reading their Cicero. A rap at the
door seemed a rude interruption; yet so unusual was the excitement of
an evening visitor that they could not be quite indifferent to the
event,--the less so when the visitor proved to be Polly's client of
the cumbrous income.

"Good evening, Miss Polly," he called, from the door, and Polly
fancied that his voice had a particularly cheerful ring in it. As he
spoke, he glanced at Dan, who had opened the door.

"Th