ke & Whitfield's
for me. I should like you to match this embroidery silk. I have not
enough of it to finish this collar and cuff set I am making for you."

"I'll be your faithful servant and execute all your commissions, mum,"
declared Marjorie with a little obeisance, her spirits rising a little
at the prospect of actual errands to perform. She was already tired of
aimlessly wandering along the wide, well-kept streets of Sanford,
feeling herself to be quite out of things. Even errands were actual
blessings sometimes, she decided, as a little later, she ran upstairs to
dress.

"May I wear my best suit and hat, Mother?" she called anxiously down
from the head of the stairs. "It's such a lovely day, I'm sure it won't
rain, snow, hail or do anything else to spoil them."

"Very well," answered Mrs. Dean, placidly.

With a gurgle of delight Marjorie hurried into her room to put on her
new brown suit, which had the mark of a well-known tailor in the coat,
and her best hat, on which all the Franklin High girls had set their
seal of approval. She had shoes and gloves to match her suit, too, and
her dancing brown eyes and fluffy brown hair were the last touches
needed to complete the dainty little study in brown.

"Don't I look nice in this suit?" she asked her mother saucily, turning
slowly around before the living-room mirror. "Aren't you and father
perfect dears to let me have it, though?" She whirled and descended upon
her mother with outstretched arms, enveloping her in an ecstatic hug
that sadly disturbed the proper angle of her brown velvet hat.

"Don't be gone too long," reminded her mother. "You know father has
promised us tickets for the theatre to-night. We shall have an early
dinner."

"All right, I'll remember, Captain." With a brisk touching of her hand
to her hat brim in salute Marjorie vanished through the door, to
reappear a moment later at the living-room window, flash a merry smile
at her mother, about face and march down the walk in true military
style.

Long before when Marjorie was a tiny girl she had shown an unusual
preference for soldiers. She had owned enough wooden soldiers to make a
regiment and was never at a loss to invent war games in which they
figured. Sometimes, when she tired of her stiff, silent armies, which
could only move as she willed, she inveigled her father or mother into
being the hero, the enemy, the traitor or whatever her active
imagination chose to suggest. Her parents, a