hat off and waved it
joyously.

"What a shame I wasn't there! They'd have gone mad over my dress."

But the next item of information crushed her. The Creature had
arrived. He had called that afternoon, and was coming to dinner that
night.

"How fortunate," said the Girl, as she went to her room, "that I
relieved my mind to that Young Man out in the park today. If I had
come back with all that pent-up feeling seething within me and heard
this news right on top of it all, I might have flown into a thousand
pieces. What lovely brown eyes he had! I do dote on brown eyes. The
Creature will be sure to have fishy blue ones."

* * * * *

When the Girl went down to meet the Creature she found herself
confronted by the Young Man. For the first, last, and only time in her
life, the Girl had not a word to say. But her family thought her
confusion very natural and pretty. They really had not expected her to
behave so well. As for the Young Man, his manner was flawless.

Toward the end of the dinner, when the Girl was beginning to recover
herself, he turned to her.

"You know I promised never to tell," he said.

"Be sure you don't, then," said the Girl meekly.

"But aren't you glad you left the loophole?" he persisted.

The Girl smiled down into her lap.

"Perhaps," she said.

Aunt Cyrilla's Christmas Basket

When Lucy Rose met Aunt Cyrilla coming downstairs, somewhat flushed
and breathless from her ascent to the garret, with a big, flat-covered
basket hanging over her plump arm, she gave a little sigh of despair.
Lucy Rose had done her brave best for some years--in fact, ever since
she had put up her hair and lengthened her skirts--to break Aunt
Cyrilla of the habit of carrying that basket with her every time she
went to Pembroke; but Aunt Cyrilla still insisted on taking it, and
only laughed at what she called Lucy Rose's "finicky notions." Lucy
Rose had a horrible, haunting idea that it was extremely provincial
for her aunt always to take the big basket, packed full of country
good things, whenever she went to visit Edward and Geraldine.
Geraldine was so stylish, and might think it queer; and then Aunt
Cyrilla always would carry it on her arm and give cookies and apples
and molasses taffy out of it to every child she encountered and, just
as often as not, to older folks too. Lucy Rose, when she went to town
with Aunt Cyrilla, felt chagrined over this--all of which goes to
pr