ear. Why, you will be in long dresses
then, and Virginia--have you noticed, by the way, what a beauty Virginia is
going to be?"

"She is just lovely," heartily agreed Betty. "She's prettier than your
Great-aunt Emmeline, isn't she?"

"By George, she is. And I've been in love with Great-aunt Emmeline for ten
years because I couldn't find her match. I say, don't let anybody go off
with Virginia while I'm at college, will you?"

"All right," said Betty, and though she smiled at him through her hair, her
smile was not so bright as it had been. It was all very well to hear
Virginia praised, she told herself, but she should have liked it better had
Dan been a little less emphatic. "I don't think any one is going to run off
with her," she added gravely, and let the subject of her sister's beauty
pass.

But at the end of the week, when Dan went back to college, her loyal heart
reproached her, and she confided to Virginia that "he thought her a great
deal lovelier than Great-aunt Emmeline."

"Really?" asked Virginia, and determined to be very nice to him when he
came home for the holidays.

"But what does he say about you?" she inquired after a moment.

"About me?" returned Betty. "Oh, he doesn't say anything about me, except
that I am kind."

Virginia stooped and kissed her. "You are kind, dear," she said in her
sweetest voice.

And "kind," after all, was the word for Betty, unless Big Abel had found
one when he said, "She is des all heart." It was Betty who had tramped
three miles through the snow last Christmas to carry her gifts to the free
negro Levi, who was "laid up" and could not come to claim his share; and it
was Betty who had asked as a present for herself the lame boy Micah, that
belonged to old Rainy-day Jones. She had met Micah in the road, and from
that day the Governor's life was a burden until he sent the negro up to her
door on Christmas morning. There was never a sick slave or a homeless dog
that she would not fly out to welcome, bareheaded and a little breathless,
with the kindness brimming over from her eyes. "She has her father's head
and her mother's heart," said the Major to his wife, when he saw the girl
going by with the dogs leaping round her and a young fox in her arms. "What
a wife she would make for Dan when she grows up! I wish he'd fancy her.
They'd be well suited, eh, Molly?"

"If he fancies the thing that is suited to him, he is less of a man than I
take him to be," retorted Mrs. Lig