ady," she observed, enraptured; "I often used to say to
Agnes----"

But Mrs. Downing was not to be defrauded.

"We were talking about those people on Bank Street," she said, "the
Latimers. Mrs. Stornaway says you crossed the Atlantic with the son, who
has just come back. Do tell us something about him."

"I am afraid I cannot make him as interesting to you as he was to me,"
answered Baird, with his light air again.

"He does not look very interesting," said Mrs. Stornaway. "I never saw
anyone so sallow; I can't understand Annie liking him."

"He is interesting," responded Baird. "Annie took one of her fancies to
him, and I took something more than a fancy. We shall be good friends, I
think."

"Well, I'm sure it's very kind of you to take such an interest,"
proclaimed Mrs. Stornaway. "You are always finding something good in
people."

"I wish people were always finding something good in me," said John
Baird. "It was not difficult to find good in this man. He is of the stuff
they made saints and martyrs of in the olden times."

"What did the girl die of?" asked Mrs. Downing.

"What?" repeated Baird. "The girl? I don't know."

"And where did she die?" added Mrs. Downing.

"I was just saying," put in Mrs. Stornaway, "that you had such a
sympathetic way of drawing people out that I was sure he had told you the
whole story."

"There was not much story," Baird answered, "and it was too sad to talk
over. The poor child went abroad and died in some little place in
Italy--of consumption, I think."

"I suppose she was sick when they went," commented Mrs. Downing. "I heard
so. It was a queer thing for them to go to Europe, as inexperienced as
they were and everything. But the father and mother were more
inexperienced still, I guess. They were perfectly foolish about the
girl--and so was the brother. She went to some studio in Boston to study
art, and they had an idea her bits of pictures were wonderful."

"I never saw her myself," said Mrs. Stornaway. "No one seems to have seen
anything of her but Miss Amory Starkweather."

"Miss Starkweather!" exclaimed Baird. "Oh, yes--in her letters she
mentioned having met her."

"Well, it was a queer thing," said Mrs. Downing, "but it was like Miss
Amory. They say the girl fainted in the street as Miss Amory was driving
by, and she stopped her carriage and took her in and carried her home.
She took quite a fancy to her and saw her every day or so until she went
away."

I