tle circle, and
contribute his share to the frolics which were continually taking place
at either the Burnams' or the Everetts'. Far into the hours of the
previous night she had lain awake, picturing her cousin as he would
probably appear to them, and going over and over in her own mind the
details of their first meeting. She was sorry that he had lost his
mother; but she found herself fervently hoping that he would not be so
very dismal, and even that he might laugh a little occasionally, when
anything particularly amusing should occur.

"Well, daught, how goes it?" And Allie found herself in her father's
arms, and then released, as Mr. Burnam added, "Here, Charlie, this is
your Cousin Alice."

With a sudden shyness, Allie put her hand into the one before her, as
she glanced up at the boyish face which was looking down into her own.
Something she read there, in the half-anxious expression of the brown
eyes, made her forget her more formal salutation, and say cordially,--

"Are you the new brother that's come to live at our house? It's going to
be splendid to have you there." And with a little confiding, sisterly
gesture, she pulled his hand through her arm, in an unspoken welcome
which was inexpressibly grateful to the lad, tired with his three
thousand miles of lonely journeying, and dreading to meet these strange
cousins into whose home life he had been so abruptly forced. Now, as he
looked at Allie's slight, girlish figure, and at her bright, happy face
which not even her irregular features could render plain, he felt a
sudden sense of relief, and secretly wished that all the family might be
as attractive as his genial uncle and the pleasant cousin who had given
him so sisterly a greeting.

"Come," she added, as her father beckoned to them; "we'll go over and
get into that carriage, while papa hunts up your trunks." And she led
the way across the platform with an apparent unconsciousness of the
three heads which precipitately bobbed down out of sight at their
approach, while the owners of the heads coiled themselves up in the
narrowest of corners, with much scraping of shoes on the boards, in the
process.

"This old station is just full of rats," she continued, in a tone of
careless explanation, as they passed the hiding-place of her brother and
his friends. "I heard the ticket-man say, just before your train came
in, that he was coming out with his gun to shoot some of them, as soon
as the engine had backed d