ed so pretty and was so
surprisingly gay. Yet, here it was, the same old Tideshead after all!

"Aunt Barbara," said Betty, as that aunt sat on the side of Betty's
four-post bed,--"Aunt Barbara, don't say good-night just yet. I must
talk about one or two things before I forget them in the morning. Mary
Picknell asked me ever so many questions about some of the pictures, but
she knows more about them than I do, and I thought I would ask her to
come some day so that you could tell her everything. She ought to be an
artist. Didn't you see how she kept looking at the pictures? And then
Harry Foster knows a lovely place down the river for a picnic, and can
borrow boats enough beside his own to take us all there, only it's a
secret yet. Harry said that it was a beautiful point of land, with large
trees, and that there was a lane that came across the fields from the
road, so that you could be driven down to meet us, if you disliked the
boats."

"I am very fond of going on the water," said Aunt Barbara, with great
spirit. "I knew that point, and those oak-trees, long before either of
you were born. It was very polite of Harry to think of my coming with
the young folks. Yes, we'll think about the picnic, certainly, but you
must go to sleep now, Betty."

"Aunt Barbara must have been such a nice girl," thinks Betty, as the
door shuts. "And if we go, Harry must take her in his boat. It is
strange that Mary Beck should not like the Fosters, just because their
father was a scamp."

But the room was still and dark, and sleepiness got the better of
Betty's thoughts that night.

VII.

THE SIN BOOKS.

ONE morning Betty was hurrying down Tideshead street to the post-office,
and happened to meet the minister's girls and Lizzie French, who were
great friends with each other. They seemed to be unusually confidential
and interested about something.

"We've got a secret club and we're going to let you belong," said Lizzie
French. "Where can we go to tell you about it, and make you take the
oath?"

"Come home with me just as soon as I post this letter," responded Betty
with great pleasure. "Do you think my front steps would be a good
place?"

"It would be too hot; beside, we don't want Mary Beck to see us,"
objected Ellen Grant, who was the most pale and quiet of the two
sisters. They were both pleasant, persistent, mild-faced girls, who
never seemed tired or confused, and never liked to change their minds
or to go out of