simple creed had some great
if old-fashioned truths in it.

"If there's any thing you would like to do, I'd be glad to give you a
chance. And there's no need to hurry. You may come to the right thing
presently."

Jack swallowed over a great lump in his throat. The two kittens came
scampering up the walk, and he caught one, lifting it to his shoulder.
Then Sylvie Barry entered the gate with her dainty milk-kettle shining
like silver.

They were in a manner neighbors, for Larch Avenue was the next street to
Maple Place. Both streets were now given over to what is termed decayed
gentility. The larches were old and ragged and brown with clustering
cones, and the blue blood of the denizens had grown a little sluggish.

Miss Honoria Barry and her small niece lived together, with a tall and
gaunt handmaiden Norman French, and a broad Yorkshire gardener. Miss
Barry was the old cream of Yerbury. Here her family had lived since the
Huguenot persecution, and dwindled finally to two. Louis Barry was a
dissipated spendthrift. He married, and tormented his wife into an early
grave, and might have worn out his sister, but Providence kindly removed
him. Miss Honoria retrenched, paid off debts and mortgage by degrees,
and brought up Sylvie in a quaint, refined, old-world fashion.

Old Mrs. Darcy and Miss Barry exchanged formal calls, and discussed la
belle France. Sylvie took great delight in listening to grandmother's
stories of brave heroes and handsome women who figured in old legends.

Oddly enough, one of the many points of agreement between Jack and Fred
had been their aversion to girls in general. Fred judged them from his
sisters, who were always nagging, always exhorting him to be a
gentleman, and always holding up Jack Darcy to ridicule. Jack, on the
other hand, had a bashful fear of girls, and fancied they were laughing
at every little awkwardness; then they cried so easily, went off in a
huff if they could not have their own way, were silly, vain, and
tattling, ready enough to beg your assistance if there was a munching
cow by the roadside, a worm swinging from a tree, or a harmless mouse
running across the floor. The great fascination to the Darcy house was,
that the boys could sit in the large, clean kitchen, trying all sorts of
crude experiments, with Ann to clear away the _debris_ and find no
fault. Jack never wanted to go to the great house. In true boy fashion
he understood without any explanation. But they both