Richards was a
name entirely new to Adah.

"I thought you were mistaken," 'Lina said, when the dress was taken off
and Adah gone. "A man such as you describe the doctor would not care for
a poor girl like Adah. Is his home at New York, and are you sure he'll
be at Saratoga?"

"He said so; and I think he told me his mother and sisters were in some
such place as Snow-down, or Snow-something."

"Snowdon," suggested 'Lina. "That's where Alice Johnson lives. I must
tell you of her."

"Alice Johnson," Ellen repeated; "why, that's the girl father says so
much about. Of course I fell in the scale, for there was nothing like
Alice, Alice--so beautiful, so religious."

"Religious!" and 'Lina laughed scornfully. "Adah pretends to be
religious, too, and so does Sam, while Alice will make three. Pleasant
prospects ahead. I wonder if she's the blue kind--thinks dancing wicked,
and all that."

Ellen could not tell. She thought it queer that Mrs. Johnson should send
her to a stranger, as it were, when they would have been so glad to
receive her. "Pa won't like it a bit, and she'd be so much more
comfortable with us," and Ellen glanced contemptuously around at the
neat but plainly-furnished room.

It was not the first time Ellen had offended by a similar remark, and
'Lina flared up at once. Mrs. Johnson knew her mother well, and knew to
whom she was committing her daughter.

"Did she know Hugh, too?" hot-tempered Ellen asked, sneeringly,
whereupon there ensued a contest of words touching Hugh, in which
Rocket, the Ladies' Fair, and divers other matters figured
conspicuously, and when, ten minutes later, Ellen left the house, she
carried with her the square-necked bertha, together with sundry other
little articles of dress, which she had lent for patterns, and the two
were, on the whole, as angry as a sandy-haired and black-eyed girl could
be.

"What a stupid I was to say such hateful things of Hugh, when I really
do like him," was Ellen's comment as she galloped away, while 'Lina
muttered: "I stood up for Hugh once, anyhow. To think of her twitting me
about our house, when everybody says the colonel is likely to fail any
day," and 'Lina ran off upstairs to indulge in a fit of crying over what
she called Nell Tiffton's meanness.

One week later and there came a letter from Alice herself, saying that
at present she was stopping in Boston with her guardian, Mr. Liston, who
had rented the cottage in Snowdon, but that she woul