year.

"It has been there ever since the day of the September Gale, father,"
he said. "The day, you know, that grandfather was here."

"Don't you remember the wind and the papers?" said Ruth. "It was
remembering that, that put it into our heads. I never thought of the
cracks and--" with a little, low, excited laugh--"the 'total depravity
of inanimate things,' till--just a little while ago."

She did not say a word about that bright boy at West Point, now,
before them all.

Uncle Roderick reached in with the crook of his cane, and drew
forward the packet, and stooped down and lifted it up. He shook off
the dust and opened it. He glanced along the lines, and at the
signature. Not a single witnessing name. No matter. Uncle Roderick is
an honest man. He turned round and held it out to father.

"It is your deed of gift," said he; and then they two shook hands.

"There!" said Ruth, tremulous with gladness. "I knew they would. That
was it. That was why. I told you, Stephen!"

"No, you didn't," said Stephen. "You never told me anything--but
cats."

"Well! I'm sure I am glad it is all settled," said Mrs. Roderick
Holabird, after a pause; "and nobody has any hard thoughts to lay up."

They would not stop to breakfast; they said they would come another
time.

But Aunt Roderick, just before she went away, turned round and kissed
Ruth. She is a supervising, regulating kind of a woman, and very
strict about--well, other people's--expenditures; but she was glad
that the "hard thoughts" were lifted off from her.

* * * * *

"I knew," said Ruth, again, "that we were all good people, and that it
must come right."

"Don't tell _me!_" says Miss Trixie, intolerantly. "She couldn't help
herself."

CHAPTER XI.

BARBARA'S BUZZ.

Leslie Goldthwaite's world of friendship is not a circle. Or if it is,
it is the far-off, immeasurable horizon that holds all of life and
possibility.

"You must draw the line somewhere," people say. "You cannot be
acquainted with everybody."

But Leslie's lines are only radii. They reach out to wherever there is
a sympathy; they hold fast wherever they have once been joined.
Consequently, she moves to laws that seem erratic to those for whom a
pair of compasses can lay down the limit. Consequently, her wedding
was "odd."

If Olivia Marchbanks had been going to be married there would have
been a "circle" invited. Nobody would have been left out; nobody