nted by that. Mother's
autographs are pretty uncommon," he said, smiling.

"Why, doesn't she write? Can't she? Does it tire her?" asked Alice.

"Oh yes, she can write, but she hates to. She gets Eunice or Minnie to
write usually."

"Dan," cried Alice intensely, "why didn't you tell me?"

"Why, I thought you knew it," he explained easily. "She likes to read,
and likes to talk, but it bores her to write. I don't suppose I get more
than two or three pencil scratches from her in the course of a year. She
makes the girls write. But you needn't mind her not writing. You may be
sure she's glad of your letters."

"It makes me seem very presumptuous to be writing to her when there's no
chance of her answering," Alice grieved. "It's as if I had passed over
your sisters' heads. I ought to have written to them."

"Oh, well, you can do that now," said Dan soothingly.

"No. No, I can't do it now. It would be ridiculous." She was silent, and
presently she asked, "Is there anything else about your mother that I
ought to know?" She looked at him with a sort of impending discipline in
her eyes which he had learned to dread; it meant such a long course of
things, such a very great variety of atonement and expiation for him,
that he could not bring himself to confront it steadily.

His heart gave a feeble leap; he would have gladly told her all that was
in it, and he meant to do so at the right time, but this did not seem
the moment. "I can't say that there is," he answered coldly.

In that need of consecrating her happiness which Alice felt, she went a
great deal to church in those days. Sometimes she felt the need almost
of defence against her happiness, and a vague apprehension mixed with
it. Could it be right to let it claim her whole being, as it seemed
to do? Than was the question which she once asked Dan, and it made him
laugh, and catch her to him in a rapture that served for the time, and
then left her to more morbid doubts. Evidently he could not follow her
in them; he could not even imagine them; and while he was with her
they seemed to have no verity or value. But she talked them over very
hypothetically and impersonally with Miss Cotton, in whose sympathy they
resumed all their import, and gained something more. In the idealisation
which the girl underwent in this atmosphere all her thoughts and
purposes had a significance which she would not of herself, perhaps,
have attached to them. They discussed them and analysed