ain.

"I don't--honest," said Evelyn. Then she added, after a second's
pause, "If I tell you something, won't you tell mamma--honest?"

"I can't promise if I don't know what it is," said Maria, with her
school-teacher manner.

"It isn't any harm, but mamma wouldn't understand. She never felt so,
and she wouldn't understand. You won't tell her, will you, sister?"

"No, I guess not," said Maria.

"Promise."

"Well, I won't tell her."

Evelyn looked up in her sister's face with her wonderful dark eyes, a
rose flush spread over her face. "Well, I am in love," she whispered.

Maria laughed, although she tried not to. "Well, with whom, dear?"
she asked.

"With a boy. Do you think it is wrong, sister?"

"No, I don't think it is very wrong," replied Maria, trying to
restrain her smile.

"His first name is pretty, but his last isn't so very," Evelyn said,
regretfully. "His first name is Ernest. Don't you think that is a
pretty name?"

"Very pretty."

"But his last name is only Jenks," said Evelyn, with a mortified air.
"That is horrid, isn't it?"

"Nobody can help his name," said Maria, consolingly.

"Of course he can't. Poor Ernest isn't to blame because his mother
married a man named Jenks; but I wish she hadn't. If we ever get
married, I don't want to be called Mrs. Jenks. Don't people ever
change their names, sister?"

"Sometimes, I believe."

"Well, I shall not marry him unless he changes his name. But he is
such a pretty boy. He looks across the school-room at me, and once,
when I met him in the vestibule, and there was nobody else there, he
asked me to kiss him, and I did."

"I don't think you ought to kiss boys," said Maria.

"I would rather kiss him than another girl," said Evelyn, looking up
at her sister with the most limpid passion, that of a child who has
not the faintest conception of what passion means.

"Well, sister would rather you did not," said Maria.

"I won't if you don't want me to," said Evelyn, meekly. "That was
quite a long time ago. It is not very likely I shall meet him
anywhere where we could kiss each other, anyway. Of course, I don't
really love him as much as I do you and papa. I would rather he died
than you or papa; but I am in love with him--you know what I mean,
sister?"

"I wouldn't think any more about it, dear," said Maria.

"I like to think about him," said Evelyn, simply. "I like to sit
whole hours and think about him, and make sort of stories about us,
yo