gain, soon as I left."

"Look me straight in the eyes, Little Sister," said the Princess
softly. "Am I like a person who would take anything that didn't belong
to her?"

"No!" I said instantly.

"How do you think I happened to come to this place?"

"Maybe our woods are prettier than yours."

"How do you think I knew where the letter was?"

I shook my head.

"If I show you some others exactly like the one you have there, then
will you believe that is for me?"

"Yes," I answered.

I believed it anyway. It just SEEMED so, the better you knew her. The
Princess slipped her hand among the folds of the trailing pale green
skirt, and from a hidden pocket drew other letters exactly like the one
I held. She opened one and ran her finger along the top line and I
read, "To the Princess," and then she pointed to the ending and it was
merely signed, "Laddie," but all the words written between were his
writing. Slowly I handed her the letter.

"You don't want me to have it?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "I want you to have it if Laddie wrote it for you--but
mother and father won't, not at all."

"What makes you think so?" she asked gently.

"Don't you know what people say about you?"

"Some of it, perhaps."

"Well?"

"Do you think it is true?"

"Not that you're stuck up, and hateful and proud, not that you don't
want to be neighbourly with other people, no, I don't think that. But
your father said in our home that there was no God, and you wouldn't
let my mother in when she put on her best dress and went in the
carriage, and wanted to be friends. I have to believe that."

"Yes, you can't help believing that," said the Princess.

"Then can't you see why you'll be likely to show Laddie the way to find
trouble, instead of sunshine?"

"I can see," said the Princess.

"Oh Princess, you won't do it, will you?" I cried.

"Don't you think such a big man as Laddie can take care of himself?"
she asked, and the dancing lights that had begun to fade came back.
"Over there," she pointed through our woods toward the southwest,
"lives a man you know. What do his neighbours call him?"

"Stiff-necked Johnny," I answered promptly.

"And the man who lives next him?"

"Pinch-fist Williams."

Her finger veered to another neighbour's.

"The girls of that house?"

"Giggle-head Smithsons."

"What about the man who lives over there?"

"He beats his wife."

"And the house beyond?"

"Mother whispers about them