ndoes like that around?"

Mr. Percival looked at his wife in silence; then he picked her up,
chair and all, and whirled her around in front of a long pier glass.

"Do you see that?" he demanded.

Lena saw and dimpled.

"Now I propose," Dick went on, "to carry you down stairs, just as you
are! I shall then arouse the whole household by my shouts and gather
them around you; and when every man jack of them is there, I shall say
'Ladies and gentlemen, is it possible for a man whose wife looks like
this to utter any serious accusation against femininity?'"

"Dick, don't be silly," said Lena, pouting with pleasure, and she
glanced again at herself in the glass. "I am nice, am I not?"

"Nice!" ejaculated Dick, "Huyler and Maillard and Whitman and Lowney,
all rolled into one big candy man, never dreamed of anything so sweet.
Did you really think I was disrespectful? Why, little Lena!"

Easter morning dawned, a God-given splendor of blue and spring softness,
and the six stood, after breakfast, on the veranda and looked at the
day.

"Time and the world are before you. Choose how you will spend the
forenoon," said Mrs. Lenox.

"I should like to drive," Lena promptly replied. "Mr. Lenox was telling
me last night about his new pair of horses. I know he is pining to show
them off."

She cast one of her most fascinating glances at her unmoved host.

"Just the thing. How shall we divide up?" And Mrs. Lenox looked vaguely
around.

"Miss Elton and I," said Norris boldly, "are going to row, just as we
used last summer."

Madeline glanced sidewise at him with some astonishment, as he made this
radical statement, but although she pondered a moment, she offered no
objection. Dick also glanced at him longingly as he said "last summer".
Our lives seem made of little bits that have small relation with each
other. Things just happen. And yet, when we look back over a long
stretch we realize that life is a coherent whole, that it leads
somewhere, and Dick's life had led a long way in the past year. So he
too became grave but said nothing, as he resigned himself to a back seat
beside Mrs. Lenox and watched Lena perched airily beside her host.

"Now I hope that matter will be amicably settled," Mrs. Lenox began,
looking with a satisfied air at the two unmarried people who were
starting toward the boat-house.

"What!" Dick exclaimed with a sudden start.

"Are you a bat that you can not see daylight facts?" she cried, turning
upo