nting to a vacant spot upon the paper. "He's always
asking about you, and you can answer his questions yourself."

"I'll do it," said Jenny, and seizing the pen, she thoughtlessly
scribbled off a ludicrous account of her failure, and of the blunders
she was constantly committing, while she spoke of Mary as the pattern
for the whole school, both in scholarship and behavior.

"There!" said she, wiping her gold pen upon her silk apron (for Jenny
still retained some of the habits of her childhood) "I guess he'll
think I'm crazy, but I hope he'll answer it, any way."

Mary hoped so too, and when at last Billy's letter came, containing a
neatly written note for Jenny, it was difficult telling which of the
two girls was the happier.

Soon after Mary went to Mount Holyoke, she had received a letter from
Billy, in which he expressed his pleasure that she was at school, but
added that the fact of her being there interfered greatly with his
plan of educating her himself. "Mother's ill health," said he,
"prevented me from doing any thing until now, and just as I am in a
fair way to accomplish my object, some one else has stepped in before
me. But it is all right, and as you do not seem to need my services at
present, I shall next week leave Mr. Selden's employment, go into Mr.
Worthington's law office as clerk, hoping that when the proper time
arrives, I shall not be defeated in another plan which was formed in
boyhood, and which has become the great object of my life."

Mary felt perplexed and troubled. Billy's letters of late had been
more like those of a lover than a brother, and she could not help
guessing the nature of "the plan formed in boyhood." She knew she
should never love him except with a sister's love, and though she
could not tell him so, her next letter lacked the tone of affection
with which she was accustomed to write, and on the whole a rather
formal affair. Billy, who readily perceived the change, attributed it
to the right cause, and from that time his letters became far less
cheerful than usual.

Mary usually cried over them, wishing more than once that Billy would
transfer his affection from herself to Jenny, and it was for this
reason, perhaps, that without stopping to consider the propriety of
the matter, she first asked Jenny to write to him, and then encouraged
her in answering his notes, which (as her own letters grew shorter)
became gradually longer and longer, until at last his letters were
addr