body
will know that she is our cousin."

"Mamma has ordered her some dresses from Hollander's," observed Georgie;
"and that was a real pretty hat that came home last night."

"I don't care. They won't look like anything when she puts them on."

"Gertrude Gray, I think it's real mean to talk so about your own
cousin," cried Marian, who, with the instinct of a true "little
pitcher," had heard every word. "It isn't Cannie's fault that she has
always lived on a farm. She didn't have anywhere else to live. Very
likely she would have preferred Paris," with fine scorn, "or to go to
boarding-school in Dresden, as you and Georgie did, if anybody had given
her the choice. She's real nice, I think, and now that her hair is put
up, she's pretty too,--a great deal prettier than some of the girls you
like. I'm going down now to sit with her. You and Georgie don't treat
her kindly a bit. You leave her all alone, and very likely she's
homesick at this moment; but I shall be nice to her, whatever you do."

Whereupon Miss Marian marched out of the room with her nose in the air,
and devoted herself to Candace for the rest of that day, much to the
lonely little visitor's contentment.

They grew quite at home with each other over "Evangeline." Birthday
books had just come into fashion. Somebody had given Marian one; and she
now brought it and asked Candace to write in it.

"June 17," she said, as Cannie sought out the right page; "why, that is
next Saturday."

"So it is, though I shouldn't have remembered it if it hadn't been for
your book."

"Why, how funny!" cried Marian, opening her eyes wide. "Don't you keep
your birthdays?"

"Keep them?" repeated Candace, in a tone of perplexity.

"Yes; keep--celebrate them? Don't people ever give you presents? Didn't
you ever have a cake?"--her voice increasing in dismay, as Candace in
answer to each question shook her head.

"Cake--on my birthday, you mean? No, I don't think I ever did. Aunt Myra
doesn't believe in cake. She says she liked it when she was young; but
since she was converted to cracked wheat and oatmeal at the age of
thirty-three, she has hardly ever touched it. We never had any at North
Tolland, except gingerbread sometimes."

"What a dreadful kind of aunt for a girl to have!" remarked Marian,
meditatively. She sat for some time longer on the floor, with her head
on Candace's knee; but she seemed to be thinking deeply about something,
and said she didn't feel like being