orpe was too much in earnest.

"Things came a little better than I thought they were going to, toward
the last," said he, "and I made a little money."

"Oh, I'm so glad!" she cried. "Was it much?"

"No, not much," he answered. The actual figures would have been so much
better! "I've made arrangements with Mrs. Renwick to hire a servant
girl, so you will have all your time free; and I have paid a year's
tuition for you in the Seminary."

"Oh!" said the girl, and fell silent.

After a time, "Thank you very much, Harry dear." Then after another
interval, "I think I'll go get ready for supper."

Instead of getting ready for supper, she paced excitedly up and down her
room.

"Oh, why DIDN'T he say what he was about?" she cried to herself. "Why
didn't he! Why didn't he!"

Next morning she opened the subject again.

"Harry, dear," said she, "I have a little scheme, and I want to see if
it is not feasible. How much will the girl and the Seminary cost?"

"About four hundred dollars."

"Well now, see, dear. With four hundred dollars I can live for a year
very nicely by boarding with some girls I know who live in a sort of
a club; and I could learn much more by going to the High School and
continuing with some other classes I am interested in now. Why see,
Harry!" she cried, all interest. "We have Professor Carghill come twice
a week to teach us English, and Professor Johns, who teaches us history,
and we hope to get one or two more this winter. If I go to the Seminary,
I'll have to miss all that. And Harry, really I don't want to go to the
Seminary. I don't think I should like it. I KNOW I shouldn't."

"But why not live here, Helen?" he asked.

"Because I'm TIRED of it!" she cried; "sick to the soul of the
stuffiness, and the glass cases, and the--the GOODNESS of it!"

Thorpe remembered his vision of the wild, wind-tossed pines, and
sighed. He wanted very, very much to act in accordance with his sister's
desires, although he winced under the sharp hurt pang of the sensitive
man whose intended kindness is not appreciated. The impossibility of
complying, however, reacted to shut his real ideas and emotions the more
inscrutably within him.

"I'm afraid you would not find the girls' boarding-club scheme a good
one, Helen," said he. "You'd find it would work better in theory than in
practice."

"But it has worked with the other girls!" she cried.

"I think you would be better off here."

Helen bravely choked b