is very becoming to
her."'

'Wasn't that rather a stiff speech to make about his _sister_?' Jerry
said, with a slight emphasis upon the last word, as she walked away,
leaving Nina to wonder if she were displeased.

Evidently not, for a few minutes later she heard her whistling softly
the air 'He promised to buy me a knot of blue ribbon to tie up my bonny
brown hair,' and could she have looked into Jerry's room she would have
seen her standing before the mirror examining the face which Harold had
said was the loveliest he had ever seen. Others had said the same, and
their sayings had been repeated to her. Billy Peterkin, and Tom Tracy,
and Dick St. Claire, and even Fred Raymond, from Kentucky, who was
supposed to be devoted to Nina. But Jerry cared little for the
compliments of either Fred or Dick, while those of Tom she scorned and
those of Billy she ridiculed. One word of commendation from Harold was
worth more to her than the praises of the whole world besides. But
Harold had always been chary of his commendations, and was rather more
given to reproof than praise, which did not altogether suit the young
lady.

As Jerry had grown older, and merged from childhood into womanhood, a
change had come over both the girl and boy, a change which Jerry
discovered first, awaking suddenly one day to find that the brother and
sister delusion was ended, and Harold stood to her in an entirely new
relation. Just when the change had commenced she could not tell. She
only knew that it had come, and that she was not quite so happy as she
had been in the days when she called Harold her brother, and kissed him
whenever she felt like it, which was very often, for she was naturally
affectionate, and showed her affection to those she loved. She was
seventeen when the dream came--the old, old story which transformed her
from a romping, a rather gushing child, into a woman more quiet and more
dignified, especially with Harold, who missed and mourned in secret for
the playful loving ways which had been so pleasant to him, even if he
did not always make a return.

Though capable of loving quite as devotedly and unselfishly as Jerry,
he was not demonstrative, while a natural shyness and depreciation of
himself made him afraid to tell in words just what or how much he did
feel. He would rather show it by acts; and never was brother tenderer or
kinder toward a sister than he was to Jerry, whose changed mood he could
not understand. And so ther