agazines, and back of
the long, narrow sitting room were a little dining room with Crimson
Rambler roses plastered against its one window, and a large kitchen in
which old Mis' Penny reigned supreme.

Here in the living room were lamps, shabby chairs, an air-tight stove,
shells, empty birds' nests, specimens of ore, blown eggs, snakeskins,
moccasins, wampum, spongy dry bees' nests, Indian baskets and rugs,
ropes and pottery, an enormous Spanish hat of yellow straw with a gaudy
band, and everywhere, in disorderly cascades and tumbled heaps, were
books and pamphlets and magazines.

Dr. Ben welcomed them eagerly and sent Martie promptly to the kitchen
to interview Mis' Penny on the subject of tea. The girls were quite at
home here, for the old doctor was Rose Ransome's mother's cousin, and
through their childhood the little gabled house had been the favourite
object of their walks. Sally, alone with her host, began to help him in
his hopeless attempt to get his library in order.

"The point is this, Sally," said Dr. Ben suddenly, after a few
innocuous comments on the weather and the health of the Monroe family
had been exchanged. "Have you and Joe Hawkes come to care for each
other?"

Sally flushed scarlet. She had been thinking hard--for Sally, who was
not given to thought--in the hours since the party for Grandma Kelly.
Now she began readily, with a great air of frankness.

"I'll tell you, Dr. Ben. I know you feel as if I was trying to hide
something from Ma and Pa, and it's worried me a good deal, too. But the
truth is, I've known Joe all my life, and he's only a boy, of
course--ever so much younger than I am--and he has just gotten this
notion into his head. Of course, it's perfectly ridiculous--because
naturally I am not going to throw my life away in any such fashion as
that! But Joe thinks now that he will never smile again--"

Thus Sally, kneeling among the books, her earnest, pretty, young face
turned toward the doctor, her eyes widely opened, as the extraordinary
jumble of words poured forth. The unpleasant sensation of their last
meeting, the confusing feeling that she was not saying what Dr. Ben
wanted her to say, beset her. She felt a sudden, dreadful inclination
toward tears, although with no clear sense of a reason for crying.

"I suppose all boys go through their silly stages like measles," said
Sally rapidly. "And it's only my misfortune and Joe's that his first
love affair had to be me. One reason