enough to gather up her skirts a little more firmly when she saw Mr.
Shaw struggling up the hill against the wind.

"Pauline!" he stopped, straightening his tall, scholarly figure. "What
brought you out in such a storm?"

With a sudden feeling of uneasiness, Pauline wondered what he would say
if she were to explain exactly what it was that had brought her out.
With an impulse towards at least a half-confession, she said hurriedly,
"I wanted to post a letter I'd just written; I'll be home almost as
soon as you are, father."

Then she ran on down the street. All at once she felt her courage
weakening; unless she got her letter posted immediately she felt she
should end by tearing it up.

When it had slipped from her sight through the narrow slit labeled
"LETTERS," she stood a moment, almost wishing it were possible to get
it back again.

She went home rather slowly. Should she confess at once, or wait until
Uncle Paul's answer came? It should be here inside of a week, surely;
and if it were favorable--and, oh, it must be favorable--would not that
in itself seem to justify her in what she had done?

On the front piazza, Patience was waiting for her, a look of mischief
in her blue eyes. Patience was ten, a red-haired, freckled slip of a
girl. She danced about Pauline now. "Why didn't you tell me you were
going out so I could've gone, too? And what have you been up to, Paul
Shaw? Something! You needn't tell me you haven't."

"I'm not going to tell you anything," Pauline answered, going on into
the house. The study door was half open, and when she had taken off
her things, Pauline stood a moment a little uncertainly outside it.
Then suddenly, much to her small sister's disgust, she went in, closing
the door behind her.

Mr. Shaw was leaning back in his big chair at one corner of the
fireplace. "Well," he asked, looking up, "did you get your letter in
in time, my dear?"

"Oh, it wasn't the time." Pauline sat down on a low bench at the other
end of the fireplace. "It was that I wanted to feel that it was really
mailed. Did you ever feel that way about a letter, father? And as if,
if you didn't hurry and get it in--you wouldn't--mail it?"

Something in her tone made her father glance at her more closely; it
was very like the tone in which Patience was apt to make her rather
numerous confessions. Then it occurred to him, that, whether by
accident or design, she was sitting on the very stool on which