nd father would adopt you! I'd just like to
have you for a sister. I've never seen a girl before that I wanted."

Lilian freed herself and went to her room. She was not an effusive girl.
At Laconia she had made some friends, but she was too proud to aspire to
the higher ranks or accept overtures from them. She felt _sorry_ for
Alice Nevins but there was no real companionship. Yet was there not a
duty? She seemed to occupy a peculiar position, and loved to listen to
the fascinating bits of talk, places one and another had seen, music,
operas, paintings, lectures, a knowledge of real things, not merely
those gleamed from books.

Well, she must earn them herself. She used to dream of them at nights
when the lights were put out. She was changing curiously, she felt it
herself. It was not only in the added self-reliance, the nameless little
ways of refinement and grace the intuitive knowledge of what we call
good breeding, and the cordial smile of commendation from Mrs.
Barrington thrilled every pulse.

Mrs. Boyd was not vulgar but she was undeniably commonplace. High
thoughts such as stirred Lilian in verse, never roused her. Yet the girl
did feel indignant at times at the manner in which some of the girls
addressed her mother when they were uniformly polite to Miss Arran.

She was quite undecided about her duty to Miss Nevins. The kiss had come
so suddenly she had no time to evade it but she took good care to do so
the next night. Lilian had never been an effusive girl. She had almost
broken her mother's heart in her little more than babyhood, when after a
rapturous caress she had half pulled from the enclosing arms and said in
a willful fashion--"Don't kiss me so hard, I don't liked to be kissed!"
And later on when her mother had always called her Lily, she had said
emphatically--"Why don't you call me Lilian! I'm too big a girl to be
called by such a baby name as Lily and I don't like it."

That began a sort of gulf between them that the mother never had the
courage to bridge over. There was a curious dignity about her that even
the obtuse Miss Nevins could not surmount.

One day the girl brought her two beautiful orchids.

"You've been so good about my lessons that I wanted to do something, and
these were"--hesitatingly--

"Handsome and expensive," in a chilling tone. "They were the finest
things the florist had, and mamma always sends me some money in her
letters, while papa sends my allowance to Mrs. Barringto