nd he reiterated his query, this time accompanying
it with an explanatory forefinger.

"What for you ride in a baby caej?"

"Hush, Allyn," Hope whispered.

"Yes; but what for?" Allyn persisted. "Why doesn't you get up and say,
'Pretty well, fank you'?"

Billy flushed and felt a momentary desire to hurl one of his cushions at
the child. For the most part, he was not sensitive about his temporary
helplessness; yet among all these strangers who had never seen him in
his strength, he was uncomfortably conscious of the difference between
himself and Hubert.

Theodora saw the heightened color in his cheeks. Without a word, she
rose, picked up Allyn in her arms and bore him away to the house,
sternly regardless of the protesting shrieks which floated out behind
her. She was absent for some time. When she came back, it was to find
that Hope had moved into her old place, and that there was no room for
her beside the chair. Billy was talking eagerly to Hope, whose pretty,
gentle face was raised towards him. Theodora felt a momentary pleasure
in her pretty sister; but this was followed by an acute pang of jealousy
to find herself quite unnoticed. For an instant, she hesitated; then she
settled herself slightly at one side and back of the chair, in a
position where she could be addressed only with an effort.

A little later, Billy turned and called her by name. She was sitting in
moody silence, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands.

"What?" she asked indifferently.

"Come over here, Teddy," Hope said.

"Thank you, I like it better here."

There was a crushing finality in her tone. For a moment, Billy's eyes
met those of Hope, and his lips curled into a smile. It was only for an
instant; but Theodora saw the glance, and it kindled all her smouldering
jealousy of her sister. For two weeks she had been giving all her odd
moments to her new neighbor, and now, because Hope was pretty and dainty
and quiet and all things that she was not, Billy had promptly turned his
back on her and devoted himself to Hope. In her passing vexation, she
quite forgot to take into account that she herself, not Billy, had been
the movable quantity, and that the time she had given him had been hours
of keen enjoyment to herself. Theodora was no saint. She was humanly
tempestuous, superhumanly jealous. She could love her friends to
distraction; she could give her time and strength and thought to them
unreservedly; but in return she demand