t me to open the window?"

Dr. Howe looked up, surprised. "If you want to, child," he said. "Dear
me, I'm afraid I have not been very entertaining, Mr. Forsythe. What do
you think of this attack on our candidate? Contemptible, isn't it? What?
I have no respect for any one who can think it anything but abominable
and outrageous."

"It's scandalous!" Dick answered,--and then in a smiling whisper to Lois,
he added, "I'm afraid to tell the doctor I'm a Democrat."

But when Lois was quite alone that night, she found herself smiling in
the darkness, and a thrill of pride made her cheeks hotter than the fire
had done.

CHAPTER IX.

"Yes," said Miss Deborah Woodhouse, as she stood in the doorway of Miss
Ruth's studio, "yes, we must give a dinner party, sister. It is certainly
the proper thing to do, now that the Forsythes are going back to the
city. It is to be expected of us, sister."

"Well, I don't know that it is expected of us," said Miss Ruth, who never
agreed too readily to any suggestion of Miss Deborah's; "but I think we
ought to do it. I meant to have spoken to you about it."

Miss Ruth was washing some brushes, a task her soul abhorred, for it
was almost impossible to avoid some stain upon her apron or her hands;
though, to guard against the latter, she wore gloves. The corners of Miss
Ruth's mouth were drawn down and her eyebrows lifted up, and her whole
face was a protest against her work. On her easel was a canvas, where she
had begun a sketch purporting to be apple-blossoms.

The studio was dark, for a mist of November rain blurred all the low gray
sky. The wide southwest window, which ran the length of the woodshed
(this part of which was devoted to art), was streaming with water, and
though the dotted muslin curtain was pushed as far back as it would go,
very little light struggled into the room. The dim engravings of nymphs
and satyrs, in tarnished frames, which had been hung here to make room
in the house for Miss Ruth's own productions, could scarcely be
distinguished in the gloom, and though the artist wore her glasses she
could not see to work.

So she had pushed back her easel, and began to make things tidy for
Sunday. Any sign of disorder would have greatly distressed Miss Ruth.
Even her paint-tubes were kept scrupulously bright and clean, and nothing
was ever out of place. Perhaps this made the room in the woodshed a
little dreary, certainly it looked so now to Miss Deborah, standing i