ea about it. On the prim young orange trees about the new houses
across the street the fruit hung golden.

"He used to reach them for me--Father Bonot did," said Molly, slowly,
"before I was tall enough. They're sweeter--Louisiana oranges are. I
used to run and hide behind his skirts, too, when I was afraid my
mother was going to whip me."

They went in. Half way up the stairs Molly paused. "You Blairs, you're
all like _him_--not like Father Bonot."

"Like who?" asked Alexina.

"Like Mr. Henderson. You Blairs and Mr. Henderson would have pulled
aside your skirts so my mother could have caught me and whipped me."

Something like apprehension sprang into Alexina's eyes. "Oh," she said
anxiously, "no; surely I'm not like that, and Aunt Harriet's not!"

"Yes, you are," said Molly stubbornly, "you all of you are. It's
because"--a sort of childish rage seized on her--"it's because you're
all of you so--so damnably sure of your duty." And Molly's foot
stamped the landing in her little fury.

It was funny, so funny that Alexina laughed. And perhaps it was true.
She could have hugged Molly; she never came so near to being fond of
Molly before.

* * * * *

December arrived, Christmas came and went. Life was almost
pastoral--no, hardly that; it was more _un fete champetre_. Each day
after breakfast the hotel emptied itself into the sunshine and
merriment, emptied itself, that is, of all but the invalids. Molly
shunned these. She never even looked the way of one if she could help
it.

There was a lake party one night. They took boat at the hotel pier in
various small craft and followed the chain of lakes to an island
midway of the farthest. The moon was up as they started.

The party was of the gayest, and one might have said that Mr.
Henderson was out of his element. Certainly his face was hardly
suggestive of hilarity. But he followed Mrs. Garnier into one of the
larger boats and took his place with a sort of doggedness. Even in the
moonlight the sharpening angle of his cheek-bone was visible, and the
deepening of the sockets in which his eyes were set, eyes that
followed Mrs. Garnier insistently.

Molly being of the party, it followed that Alexina was, too, but that
William Leroy was of it seemed to quicken something in his own sense
of humour. His manner with the gay world was perhaps a little stony.
He avowed, when thus accused by Alexina and Mr. Jonas, that it was to
cover bashfu