its tremendous possibilities in her absence. What would the
Mediterranean Sea and its adjoining countries be to us unless the
wanderings of Ulysses and AEneas had made them real? And what would
Cousin Eleanor's yard have been without Honora? Whatever there was of
romance and folklore in Uncle Tom's library Honora had extracted at an
early age, and with astonishing ease had avoided that which was dry and
uninteresting. The result was a nomenclature for Aunt Eleanor's yard, in
which there was even a terra incognita wherefrom venturesome travellers
never returned, but were transformed into wild beasts or monkeys.

Although they acknowledged her leadership, Edith and Mary were sorry for
Honora, for they knew that if her father had lived she would have had a
house and garden like theirs, only larger, and beside a blue sea where
it was warm always. Honora had told them so, and colour was lent to her
assertions by the fact that their mother, when they repeated this to
her, only smiled sadly, and brushed her eyes with her handkerchief. She
was even more beautiful when she did so, Edith told her,--a remark which
caused Mrs. Hanbury to scan her younger daughter closely; it smacked of
Honora.

"Was Cousin Randolph handsome?" Edith demanded. Mrs. Hanbury started, so
vividly there arose before her eyes a brave and dashing figure, clad in
grey English cloth, walking by her side on a sunny autumn morning in the
Rue de la Paix. Well she remembered that trip abroad with her mother,
Randolph's aunt, and how attentive he was, and showed them the best
restaurants in which to dine. He had only been in France a short time,
but his knowledge of restaurants and the world in general had been
amazing, and his acquaintances legion. He had a way, which there was no
resisting, of taking people by storm.

"Yes, dear," answered Mrs. Hanbury, absently, when the child repeated
the question, "he was very handsome."

"Honora says he would have been President," put in George. "Of course
I don't believe it. She said they lived in a palace by the sea in the
south of France, with gardens and fountains and a lot of things like
that, and princesses and princes and eunuchs--"

"And what!" exclaimed Mrs. Hanbury, aghast.

"I know," said George, contemptuously, "she got that out of the Arabian
Nights." But this suspicion did not prevent him, the next time Honora
regaled them with more adventures of the palace by the summer seas,
from listening with a rapt a