morning decides
the fortune of the day for you? Now, what kind of a day are you going
to give me?"

Lydia laughed. "Oh, you must tell first! You forget you're the first
person I've seen this morning. I'll see what I can do for you after I've
seen what you are going to do for me." She added, with a solemnity only
half jocular, "But it's ever so much more important in my case, for
you're the first person I meet as I begin my life in Endbury. Think what
a responsibility for you! You ought to give me something extra nice
beside, for not remembering me any better and never noticing that I had
been away." She broke into a sunny mitigation of her own severity, "But
you can have some grapes, even if you are not very flattering."

The man took the cluster she held out to him, but only eyed them as he
answered, "Oh, I remember you very well. You're a niece of Mrs.
Sandworth's, or of her husband's, and Mrs. Sandworth is Dr. Melton's
sister. You're the big-eyed little girl who used to sit in a corner and
sew while the doctor and I talked, and now," he brought it out rotundly,
"you've been to Europe for a year, and you're grown-up."

Lydia hung her head laughingly at his good-natured caricature. "Well,
but I _have_, really and truly," she protested, "all of that. And I just
guess you haven't had two such interesting things happen to you in such
a short time as--" She stopped short, struck dumb by a sudden
recollection. "Oh, I beg your pardon," she murmured; "I forgot about
what they said you had--"

Her expression was so altered, she looked at him with so curious a
change from familiarity to strangeness, that his steady eyes wavered a
moment in startled surprise. "What's that?" he asked sharply; "I didn't
catch what you said."

"Why, nothing--nothing--only they were telling me yesterday about how
you--why, it just came over me that you _had_ had a great deal happen to
you this last year, as well as I."

He looked a relieved and slightly annoyed comprehension of the case.
"Oh, that!" he summed it up for her with a grave brevity. "I have lost
my father, and I have started life on a new footing during the past
year."

Lydia fumbled for words that would be applicable and not wounding. "I
was so sorry to hear that--about your father, I mean. And about the
other--it must be very--_interesting_, I'm sure."

His silence and enigmatic gaze upon her moved her to a fluttered fear
lest she seem ungracious. She added, with a droll lit