m up with delight, burying her face in their cool fragrance.
Where had they come from? She knew no one who raised sweet peas,--no one
except the Howes, and of course----she halted and blushed. Could it have
been the Howes?

"_Mary's are white_" she heard herself automatically repeating in Jane's
phrases. "_'Liza's pink, an' mine are purple. Martin has his in another
place, 'cause he likes all the colors mixed together. But he never picks
his nor lets us. He says he likes to see 'em growin'._"

And now, by some miracle, here were the blossoms of Martin's raising,
their prismatic tints exquisite as a sunset. It was like holding the
rainbow in one's hands. She knew the Howes too well to cherish for an
instant the illusion that any of the three sisters had cut the flowers
from the vines. They would not have dared. No. No hand but Martin's had
plucked them.

With a strange fluttering of her heart, Lucy carried the bouquet to her
own room, a corner of the house where Ellen seldom intruded. There she
bent over it with a happy, triumphant little smile. Then, from behind the
shelter of the muslin curtain, she blew a kiss from her finger tips to
Mr. Martin Howe, who was hoeing potatoes on the hill, with his back set
squarely toward the Webster mansion.

When Ellen returned at noon, there was still a shell-like flush of pink on
the girl's cheek and on her lips a smile for which her aunt could not
account.

"Where you been?" inquired the woman suspiciously.

"Nowhere. Why?"

"You look as if somebody'd sent you a Christmas tree full of presents."

Lucy laughed softly.

"You ain't been to the Howes'?"

"I haven't been anywhere," repeated Lucy, throwing up her chin. "I'm
telling the truth."

Ellen eyed her shrewdly.

"Yes, I reckon you are," she observed slowly. "I ain't never caught you
lyin' yet." Then as if an afterthought had occurred to her, she added:
"Likely you've been thinkin' 'bout the will I've been makin'."

She saw Lucy open her lips, then close them.

"I've got it all done," went on Ellen audaciously. "It's drawn up, signed,
an' sealed. In fact, I brought it home with me. Here it is."

Tossing a large white envelope fastened with a splash of red wax upon the
table, she peered at her niece.

"I'm goin' to give it to you to keep," continued she in a hectoring tone.
"It'll be like havin' Pandora's box around. You can't open it, an' you'll
have the continual fun of wonderin' what's inside."

"I'd rather