t's just the kind for us, Kentie!"

"She's writing,--copying something,--music, it looks like; see it
there, set up against the shutter. She always goes out with a music
roll in her hand. I wonder whether she gives or takes?" said Diana,
stopping on her way to her own seat to look out over Hazel's
shoulder.

"Both, I guess," said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "Most people do. Why don't
you put your flowers in the window, Hazel?"

"Why, so I will!"

They were a great bunch of snowy white and deep crimson asters, with
green ivy leaves, in a tall gray glass vase. Rachel Froke had just
brought them in from Miss Craydocke's garden.

"They're looking, mother! Only I do think it's half too bad! That
girl seems as if she would almost reach across after them. Perhaps
they came from the country, and haven't had any flowers."

"Thee might take them over some," said Mrs. Froke, simply.

"O, I shouldn't dare! There are other people in the house, and I
don't know their names, or anything. I wish I could, though."

"I can," said Rachel Froke. "Thee'll grow tall enough to step over
pebbles one of these days. Never mind; I'll fetch thee more
to-morrow; and thee'll let the vase go for a while? Likely they've
nothing better than a tumbler."

Rachel Froke went down the stairs, and out along the paved walk,
into the street. She stopped an instant on the curb-stone before she
crossed, and looked up at those second story windows. Hazel watched
her. She held up the vase slightly with one hand, nodding her little
gray bonnet kindly, and beckoned with the other.

The young girl started from her seat.

In another minute Hazel saw them together in the doorway.

There was a blush and a smile, and an eager brightness in the face,
and a quick speaking thanks, that one could read without hearing,
from the parted lips, on the one side, and the quiet, unflutterable
gray bonnet calmly horizontal on the other; and then the door was
shut, and Rachel Froke was crossing the damp pavement again.

"I'm so glad Aspen Street is narrow!" said Hazel. "I should hate to
be way off out of sight of people. What did you say to her, Mrs.
Froke?" she asked, as the Friend reentered. Hazel could by no means
take the awful liberty of "Rachel."

"I said the young girl, Hazel Ripwinkley, being from the country,
knew how good flowers were to strangers in the town, and that she
thought they might be strange, and might like some."

Hazel flushed all up. At that same instan