ing dressed as a man
and driving her there, because the Duchess had been warned and hautily
refused to wear the paste copies she had--when Sis said, peavishly:

"Why don't you knit or do somthing useful, Bab?"

I do not mind being picked on by my parents or teachers, knowing it is
for my own good. But I draw the line at Leila. So I replied:

"Knit! If that's the scarf you were on at Christmas, and it looks like
it, because there's the crooked place you wouldn't fix, let me tell you
that since then I have made three socks, heals and all, and they are
probably now on the feet of the Allies."

"Three!" she said. "Why THREE?"

"I had no more wool, and there are plenty of one-leged men anyhow."

I would fane have returned to my book, dreaming between lines, as it
were, of the Romanse which had come into my life the day before. It is,
I have learned, much more interesting to read a book when one has, or
is, experiencing the Tender Passion at the time. For during the love
seens one can then fancy that the impasioned speaches are being made to
oneself, by the object of one's afection. In short, one becomes, even if
but a time, the Heroine.

But I was to have no privacy.

"Bab," Sis said, in a more mild and fraternal tone, "I want you to do
somthing for me."

"Why don't you go and get it yourself?" I said. "Or ring for George?"

"I don't want you to get anything. I want you to go to father and mother
for somthing."

"I'd stand a fine chance to get it!" I said. "Unless it's Calomel or
advice."

Although not suspicous by nature, I now looked at her and saw why I had
recieved the pink hoze. It was not kindness. It was bribery!

"It's this," she explained. "The house we had last year at the seashore
is emty and we can have it. But mother won't go. She--well, she won't
go. They're going to open the country house and stay there."

A few days previously this would have been sad news for me, owing to not
being allowed to go to the Country Club except in the mornings, and no
chance to meet any new people, and no bathing save in the usual tub. But
now I thriled at the information, because the Grays have a place near
the Club also.

For a moment I closed my eyes and saw myself, all in white and decked
with flours, wandering through the meadows and on the links with a
certain Person whose name I need not write, having allready related my
feelings toward him.

I am older now by some weeks, older and sader and wiser. For T