he soft blue of
her dress was and how picturesque she was herself even in the
unconsciousness of her posture, he was tempted to try to bring that
little, half-resentful glow into her upraised eyes again.

"I have often heard your sister make indiscreetly amiable speeches to
you, Mollie," he said. "Did she ever tell you that you ought to have
been born a sultana?"

She shook her head and pouted a little.

"I should n't like to be a sultana," she said.

"What!" he exclaimed. "Not a sultana in spangled slippers and gorgeous
robes!"

"No," she answered, with a spice of Dolly in her speech. "The slippers
are great flat things that turn up at the toes, and the sultan might buy
me for so much a pound, and--and I care for other things besides dress."

"Nevertheless," he returned, "you would have made a dazzling sultana."

Then he went away and left her, and she sat down upon her stool before
the fire again and began to pull her hair down and let it hang in grand
disorder about her shoulders and over her face.

"If I am so--so pretty," she said slowly, to herself, "people ought to
like me, and," sagaciously, "I must be pretty or he would not say so."

And when she went to her room it must be confessed that she crept to the
glass and stared at the reflection of the face framed in the abundant,
falling hair, until Aimee, wondering at her quietness, raised her head
from her pillow, and, seeing her, called her to her senses.

"Mollie," she said, in her quietest way, "you look very nice, my dearr
and very picturesque, and I don't wonder at your admiring yourself;
but if you stand there much longer in your bare feet you will have
influenza, and then you will have to wear a flannel round your throat,
and your nose will be red, and you won't derive much satisfaction from
your looking-glass for a week to come."

CHAPTER IX. ~ IN WHICH WE ARE UNORTHODOX.

"SOMETHING," announced Phil, painting away industriously at his
picture,--"something is up with Grif. Can any of you explain what it
is?"

Mollie, resting her elbows on the window-ledge, turned her head over
her shoulder; 'Toinette, tying Tod's sleeves with red ribbon, looked
up; Aimee went on with her sewing, the two little straight lines making
themselves visible on her forehead between her eyebrows. The fact of
something being "up" with any one of their circle was enough to create a
wondering interest.

"There is no denying," Phil proceeded, "that he is changed