y slowly moved away, "and
although we only met to-day, I am really growing very fond of her, and I
like her the better because there is still so much of the child left in
her. Do not you like her the better for that, Mr. Haverley?"

Ralph did agree most heartily, and it made him happy to agree on any
subject with a girl who was even more beautiful by moonlight than by
day; who was so kind, and tended to his sister, and whose generous
disposition could overlook little breaches of etiquette when there was
reason to do so.

As they walked backward and forward, not very far away from the piazza,
and sometimes stopping to admire bits of the silver-tinted landscape,
Dora, with most interesting deftness, gave Ralph further opportunity of
knowing her. With his sister as a suggesting subject, she talked about
herself; she told him how she, too, had lost her parents early in life,
and had been obliged to be a very independent girl, for her stepmother,
although just as good as she could be, was not a person on whom she could
rely very much. As for her brother, the dearest man on earth, she had
always felt that she was more capable of taking care of him, at least in
all matters in home life, than he of her.

"But I have been very happy," she went on to say, "for I am so fond of
country life, and everything that belongs to it, that the more I have to
do with it, the better I like it, and I really begrudge the time that I
spend in the city. You do not know with what pleasure I look forward to
helping Miriam get breakfast to-morrow morning. I consider it a positive
lark. By the way, Mr. Haverley, do you like rolled omelets?"

Ralph declared that he liked everything that was good, and had no doubt
that rolled omelets were delicious.

"Then I shall make some," said Dora, "for I know how to do it. And I
think you said, Mr. Haverley, that the coffee to-night was too strong."

"A little so, perhaps," said Ralph, "but it was excellent."

"Oh, it shall be better in the morning. I am sure it will be well for one
of us to do one thing, and the other another. I will make the coffee."

"You are wonderfully kind to do anything at all," said Ralph, and as he
spoke he heard the clock in the house strike ten. It was agreeable in the
highest degree to walk in the moonlight with this charming girl, but he
felt that it was getting late; it was long past Miriam's bedtime, and he
wondered why the doctor did not come.

Dora perceived the perturba