t all. And
though I only saw you at a distance, and through your veil, and half
behind a pillar, I knew you, and knew Miss MacDowlas. I think I knew
Miss MacDowlas most because she _wasn't_ behind the pillar. And it
nearly drove me crazy to think you were so near, and I gave one of the
servants some money to find out where you were staying, and she brought
me word that you were staying here, and meant to stay. And then I
asked the lady principal to let me come and see you, and of course
she refused; and I never should have been able to come at all, only it
chanced that was my music-lesson day, and I went in to the professor
with red eyes,--I had cried so,--and when he asked me what I had been
crying for, I remembered that he used to be fond of you, and I told
him. And he was sorry for me, and promised to ask leave for me. He is a
cousin of the lady principal, and a great favorite with her. And the end
of it was that they let me come. And I have almost flown. I had to wait
until to-day, you know, because it was Saturday."

It was quite touching to see how, when she stopped speaking, she clung
to Dolly's hands, and looked at her with wonder and grief in her face.

"What is it that has changed you so?" she said. "You are not like
yourself at all. Oh, my dear, how ill you are!"

A wistful shadow showed itself in the girl's eyes.

"_Am_ I so much changed?" she asked.

"You do not look like our Dolly at all," protested Phemie. "You are
thin,--oh, so thin! What _is_ the matter?"

"Thin!" said Dolly. "Am I? Then I must be growing ugly enough. Perhaps
it is to punish me for being so vain about my figure. Don't you remember
what a dread I always had of growing thin? Just to think that _I_ should
grow thin, after all! Do my bones stick out like the Honorable Cecilia
Howland's, Phemie?" And she ended with a little laugh.

Phemie kissed her, in affectionate protest against such an idea.

"Oh, dear, no!" she said. "They could n't, you know. They are not
the kind of bones to do it. Just think of her dreadful elbows and her
fearful shoulder-blades! You couldn't look like her. I don't mean that
sort of thinness at all. But you seem so light and so little. And look
here," and she held up the painfully small hand, the poor little hand
without the ring. "There are no dimples here now, Dolly," she said,
sorrowfully.

"No," answered Dolly, simply; and the next minute, as she drew her hand
away, there fluttered from her lips a sigh.