on.

"I wonder what they have told her about me?" was her thought. It brought a
flush to her face, and yet why did she care?

Rosalind accepted the invitation shyly. "I must be early," she said. "I
was to meet the others here at ten, but I went to drive first with
grandmamma."

"It is still ten minutes of ten," Celia said, looking at her watch. "Are
you going to have a picnic?"

"No; only a meeting of our society."

"What sort of a society?" Celia asked.

"A secret society," Rosalind replied, with a demure smile.

"Oh, is it? That sounds interesting, but I suppose I can't know any more.
What is your book? That isn't part of the secret, is it?"

Rosalind slipped off the paper cover and laid the little volume in Celia's
lap.

The young lady took it up, exclaiming with delight over the binding of
soft leather, the handmade paper, and beautiful type. It fell open at the
fly-leaf with the inscription.

"And Professor Sargent gave you this Lovely book?" she said.

Rosalind's eyes shone at this tribute. "Cousin Louis gave it to me just
before he and father started for Japan, and he wrote that about the hard
things because I wanted so much to go with them and I couldn't," she
explained.

"Rosalind, what was it you were talking to Maurice about, here behind the
arbor one day? I couldn't help hearing a little. It had something to do
with a forest." Celia had dropped the book in her lap and looked at
Rosalind with something that was almost eagerness in her lace.

Rosalind thought a moment, "Why, did you hear us? I know now what it was,"
and she turned the leaves and pointed to the paragraph beginning, "If we
will, we may travel always in the Forest," then she added shyly, "You
ought to belong to the Forest because of your name."

"'So losing by the way the sacred gift of happiness,'" Celia repeated, her
eyes on the book. "What do you mean by belonging to the Forest?" she
asked, looking up.

Rosalind seldom needed to be urged to talk on this subject, and she had a
sympathetic listener as she explained the Forest secret, and told how it
had helped her in the loneliness of those first days in Friendship.

Celia was lonely and sad. She had held aloof so long in her proud reserve
that now there seemed nowhere to turn for the sympathy she longed for, and
Rosalind's little allegory, with its simple message of patience and hope,
fell upon ground well prepared.

"Oh, Rosalind," she cried, "show me how to live in the Fo