it off. Like the other
Elsie, she decided to avoid meditation and plunge into action. And
though the sort and amount of action to which she was limited wouldn't
have seemed action at all to the other girl, it answered her purpose,
nevertheless. Elsie Marley threw herself into the performance of the
various duties she had assumed with more fervor than ever, and
presently had recovered a good measure of her former serenity.

But it seemed only to have been regained to be threatened.

One night early in February, when Miss Stewart relieved her and she
left the library, she found Dick Clinton waiting outside. He often did
this, for he and Elsie had become good friends since the day he had
first appeared at the library and asked for help. She had seen him at
all the parties of the high-school pupils which she had attended, and
had gone coasting on his double-runner with other girls a number of
times. And no Sunday passed that he didn't seek her after service and
walk home with her.

He was strangely silent to-night. His first shyness having worn off,
he had since always had plenty to say. Elsie was always quiet, and not
a word was spoken until they were next door to the parsonage.

"Oh, Miss Moss, would you just as lief walk back a little way?" he
asked suddenly. "I had something I wanted to say to you, and there's
the parsonage and I haven't begun. I won't make you late for your
supper--or dinner, whatever it is."

Rather surprised, Elsie complied willingly, and they had no sooner
turned than he began.

"It's something I've done," he blurted out. "I feel sort of--like
thirty cents, you know. I should sort of like to know--what you think
of it."

"Whatever it is, I don't believe you need to feel that way about it,
Dick," she said gently.

"I do, just the same, though I'm not sure I should have before I knew
you, Miss Moss, you're so awfully sort of square, you see," he owned.
"I'm glad anyhow it ain't so bad but what I can tell you. This is what
it is: one of the other fellows that's about my height and build wanted
to go to the motor-show in Boston last week and his dad wouldn't let
him. He's simply wild over aeroplanes, and there was a model there,
and when the last night came, he got me to help him out. He pretended
to go to bed about a quarter of nine. Instead, he sneaked me up the
back-stairs and left me in his room, and he caught the nine o'clock for
Boston. I went to bed and put out the lig