verything, you're lovely, you've your voice, you
haven't begun to live yet--oh, I know he's my uncle, and I remember
all he's done for me, but I've known him years, Emily, _years_, and
I've never seen Uncle Austen laugh once."

What on earth has laughing to do with it? Alexina always was queer.
This from Emily. Not that she said it, except in the puzzled,
uncomprehending stare at Alexina, while she returned to what she
had come to communicate. "We're going to be married the first day of
October," she said. "Mr. Blair has to go East on some business then."

Alexina drew herself together with a laugh. What was the use--yet she
could not divest herself of a responsibility.

She looked at Emily, who was looking at her. Their eyes met. Alexina
looked away.

"Emily," she said, "there's a thing"--it took effort to say it--"a
thing maybe you haven't thought of. It came to Aunt Harriet; it comes
to everybody, I feel sure. Won't you be cutting yourself off from any
right to it?" The red was waving up to Alexina's very hair.

Emily showed no resentment at this implication which both seemed to
take for granted, but then she was not following Alexina very closely,
her own thoughts being absorbing. "The wedding will have to be in our
little house," she said, "so it won't make much difference about the
dress; nobody'll be there. But for the rest, I'm going to have some
clothes. I told mother and father and grandfather so this morning."

Alexina went over and seized the other's hands as children do. A
softer feeling had come over her. Perhaps Emily was doing this thing
to help her people. Besides, she and Emily used to weave wonderful
garbs in bygone days, for the wearing to the Prince's ball. To be
sure, one never had pictured an Uncle Austen as the possible Prince,
but still Emily should have them, if she wanted them.

Alexina's gaze fell upon a flower lying on the floor, which had
dropped out of Garrard Ransome's buttonhole. The boy loved flowers as
most men from the blue grass country do, and the cottage yard was a
wilderness of them. She had almost forgotten Garrard's share in this.
She picked the flower up and handed it to Emily. "Dr. Ransome has been
here," she said, feeling treacherous--for the other man, after all,
was her uncle.

Emily took it, and laid it against the lace of her parasol, this way
and that.

"I've always, as far back as I can remember, meant to be somebody,
something," said Emily. She said it witho