ce?
Now sit down and warm yourself. It's too delightful to have you! It is
like a bit of home, and a bit of old times. Those old school days were
pleasant?"

"Very pleasant!" said Dolly, sitting down and looking into the queer
but bright fire of small sticks which burned in Christina's chimney.
"Very pleasant! I was with my dear Aunt Hal, in Philadelphia."

"But these days are better, Dolly," Miss Thayer went on. "That wasn't
much compared to this."

"I don't know," said Dolly. "There was no care in those times."

"Care?" exclaimed Christina, as if she did not know the meaning of the
word. "What care have you, Dolly? I have none, except the care to make
my money buy all I want--which it won't, so I may as well make up my
mind to it, and I do. What have you been getting in Rome?"

"Oh, more pleasure than I knew so many days could hold," said Dolly,
laying some of the sticks of the fire straight.

"Isn't it wonderful? I think there's nothing like Rome. Unless,
perhaps, Paris."

"Paris!" said Dolly. "What's at Paris?"

"Ah, you don't know it, or you wouldn't ask! Everything, my dear. Rome
has a good deal, certainly, but Paris has _everything_. Now tell
me,--are you engaged?"

"I? No. Of course not."

"I don't see why it's of course. Most people are at one time or
another; and I didn't know but your time had come."

"No," said Dolly. "Neither the time nor the man. I've come to hear
about yours."

"If he's good, you'll see him; the man, I mean. He promised to be with
us at Christmas, if he could; and he always keeps his promises."

"That's a good thing," said Dolly. .

"Ye-s," said Christina, "that is, of course, a good thing. One likes to
have promises kept. But it is possible to have too much of a good
thing."

"Not of keeping promises!" said Dolly in unfeigned astonishment.

"I don't know," said Christina. "Sandie is so fixed in everything; he
holds to his opinions and his promises and his expectations; and he
holds a trifle too fast."

"He has a right to hold to his expectations, surely," said Dolly,
laughing.

"Not too much," said Christina. "He has no right to expect everybody to
keep their promises as precisely as he does his! People aren't made
alike."

"No; but honour is honour."

"Come, now, Dolly," said Christina laughing in her turn, "you are
another! You are just a little bit precise, like my Sandie. You cannot
make all the world alike, if you try; and he can't."

"I am not going to