ity to do so. No woman, much less a keenly sensitive young woman
like her, is ever long in doubt as to a man's feelings, and Alice Page,
whose heart had never felt a stronger emotion than love for her brother,
knew the moment she read her admirer's first letter that its
well-considered words were really inspired by Cupid. More than that, she
felt sure that his commendable efforts to become a useful professional
man, instead of a badly bored idler, were due to the hope that the
effort would find favor in her eyes. In all these surmises it is
needless to say her feminine intuition was quite correct.

That her brother also surmised the truth is quite likely, though he
wisely kept these thoughts to himself for good and sufficient reasons.

"Frank is getting along nicely," he wrote Alice, in the early spring; "I
believe he has the making of a capable lawyer in him. He grinds away
harder than I ever did when reading law, and has never yet complained of
how dry and dull it all is. He is a big, warm-hearted fellow, too, and I
am growing more fond of him every day. He is more devoted to me than a
brother, and we have made a lot of plans for a month's outing on the
'Gypsy' this coming summer. I like his family very much, and Mrs. Nason
and both her daughters have invited me to bring you down when your
school closes to make them a visit. I think I shall run up in June, and
stay over Sunday, and bring Frank with me. I imagine he would like to
come, for once in a while I overhear him humming 'Ben Bolt.'"

"A very nicely worded little plot; but don't you imagine, my dear Bert,
I do not see through it!" was the mental comment of Alice when she read
the letter. "The young gentleman has bravely set to work to become a man
instead of a cipher; my brother likes him; he whistles 'Ben Bolt;' my
brother is to bring him up here again; I am expected to fall in love
with Mr. Cipher that was, and help him spend his money, and I am to be
barely tolerated by mamma and both sisters! A most charming plot,
surely, but it takes two to make a bargain. I think I know just the sort
of people mamma and sisters are. He told me she read him a lecture every
time he danced twice with a poor girl, and now I am expected to walk
into the same trap, and cringe to her ladyship, for the sin of being
poor. I guess not! I'll teach school till I die first, and he can think
of me as having a 'slab of granite so gray' to keep me in place."

But this diplomatic "Sweet