together pleadingly. "O Aunt Sue! why must I
wait until I am grown for those silks? I wish you to give them to
Nellie and me now. Please, please do. I am sure we are old enough to
appreciate them. Nellie would be a perfect dream in the pink silk, and
I should dearly love to have the blue. We never, never can need the
dresses more than we do _now_! Why, in two or three years Nellie and I
may be rich! Who knows? What is the use in keeping them for some future
time, when Nellie and I need them at the present moment? You know we
ought to have one handsome gown apiece, Auntie. Mrs. Curtis and
Madeleine are always beautifully dressed."

"Yes, Mother, please let Madge have her way," entreated Nellie. "But I
can't accept one of the frocks. I wouldn't take it away from you for
the world."

"Very well, Auntie," replied Madge, with a little choke in her voice.
"I am sorry I mentioned the subject to you. I don't care for the silks,
then. I won't even look at them, unless Nellie will take one of them."

"Silly Madge!" remonstrated Eleanor, coming up behind her cousin and
tweaking a loose curl of her auburn hair. "I know you wish me to share
everything with you, and I thank you just the same. But, Madge, I can't
accept one of those dresses. Don't you see, they were your mother's,
and that makes all the difference in the world."

"I can't see what difference it makes if I wish to do it. You always
divide everything you have with me, and I don't see why you can't let
me be generous for once."

Madge's eyes were misty. The thought of her mother and father made it
hard for her to speak without emotion. "Besides," she added, smiling in
her charming fashion, "I will never wear a pink gown. No one need try
to persuade me. It wouldn't be in keeping with my red hair!"

Eleanor put her arm around her cousin. She understood the little quaver
in Madge's laughing voice.

"Of course I will have the dress, if you feel that way about it," she
said gently. "And I shall adore it. Why, I can see myself in it this
minute, with a pink rose fastened in my hair. But all this time you and
I have been arguing Mother has not yet said that you could use the
silks. Please consent, Mother; there's a dear."

Mrs. Butler looked grave. "I suppose it is all right," she hesitated.
"The silks belong to Madge and she is old enough to decide what she
wishes to do with them. Look in my left-hand bureau drawer, Madge; you
will find the key to your mother's trunk