ident that Rebecca at least favored his plans.

Turning now to the younger sister, Droop asked, in a melancholy tone:

"Don't you want to get rich, Cousin Phoebe?"

"Rich--me!" she replied, indignantly. "A mighty lot of riches it'll
bring me, won't it? That's just what riles me so! You an' Rebecca just
think of nothin' but your own selves. You never stop to think of me!"

Droop opened his eyes very wide indeed, and Rebecca said, earnestly:

"Phoebe, you know you ain't got any call to say sech a thing!"

"Oh, haven't I?" cried Phoebe, in broken accents. "Did either of you
think what would happen to me if we all went back to 1876? Two years
old! That's what I'd be! A little toddling baby, like Susan Mellick's
Annie! Put to bed before supper--carried about in everybody's arms--fed
on a bottle and--and perhaps--and perhaps getting _spanked_!"

With the last word, Phoebe burst into tears of mingled grief and
mortification and rushed from the room.

The others dared not meet each other's guilty eyes. Droop gazed about
the room in painful indecision. He could not bear to give up all hope,
and yet--this unforeseen objection really seemed a very serious one. To
leave the younger sister behind was out of the question. On the other
hand, the consequences of the opposite course were--well, painful to her
at least.

In his nervousness he unconsciously grasped a small object on the table
upon which his left hand had been lying. It was a miniature daintily
painted on ivory. He looked vacantly upon it; his mind at first quite
absent from his eyes. But as he gazed, something familiar in the lovely
face depicted there fixed his attention. Before long he was examining
the picture with the greatest interest.

"Well, now!" he exclaimed, at length. "Ain't that pretty! Looks jest
like her, too. When was that tuck, Miss Wise?"

"That ain't Phoebe," said Rebecca, dejectedly.

"Ain't Phoebe!" Droop cried, in amazement. "Why, it's the finest
likeness--why--but--it _must_ be yer sister!"

"Well, 'tain't. Thet pictur is jest three hundred years old."

"Three hundred--" he began--then very slowly, "Well, now, do tell!" he
said.

"Phoebe's got the old letter that tells about it. The's a lot of 'em
in that little carved-wood box there. They say it come over in the
Mayflower."

Droop could not take his eyes from the picture. The likeness was
perfect. Here was the pretty youthful oval of her face--the same playful
blue eye--the sensit