nybody says; things are different."

"Of course they are," responded Alice. "Who said they weren't?"

Eva turned to the volume before her, and read aloud about the man who
had fallen among thieves, and the good Samaritan who came along and
bound up his wounds and took care of him.

"Now how can we do things like that?" she said.

"Oh, Eva, I should think you were about five or six years old instead of
a girl of thirteen. Nobody means that you are to do just those
particular things. What they do mean now is that you are to be good to
people who are in trouble,--people who need things done for them."

"Well, I'd be good to them if I had a chance; but what chance do I have
now with all my lessons? When I grow up, I shall belong to charitable
societies, as mamma does, and give things to poor folks, and go to see
them. I can't now; girls of our age can't, of course."

"We can do some things in vacations,--get up fairs and things of that
kind, and give the money to the poor."

"Oh, I've done that. I helped in a fair last summer, and we gave the
money to the children's hospital. But Miss Vincent said last week that
all of us could find ways of doing good every day if we would keep our
eyes and ears and hearts open; and I've felt ever since that she was
keeping her eyes open on the watch for something she expected _me_ to
do."

"Nonsense! She knows as well as we do that we haven't time to do any
more now. She means when we grow older. But look at the clock,--five
minutes to supper-time, and I've got to 'do' my hair all over, the braid
is so frowzely."

"What makes you braid it? Why don't you let it hang in a curl, as you
used to?"

"I told you why yesterday,--because that Burr girl has made me sick of
curls, with that great black flop of hers stringing down her back. She'd
make me sick of anything. I haven't worn my red blouse since she came
out with that fiery thing of hers. _Isn't_ it horrid?"

"Yes, horrid!"

A few minutes after, as Eva and Alice were stirring their cocoa at the
supper-table, the girl they had been criticising came hastily into the
dining-room and took her place. She was a tall girl for her age, with a
heavy ungainly figure, a swarthy skin, and black hair which was tied
back in a long curl. She wore a dark plaid skirt, with a blouse of fiery
red cashmere, and a hair ribbon of a deep violet shade. Nothing could
have been more ill-matched or more unbecoming. The girl who sat beside
her, pretty J