nown that living-room was
yours if I hadn't had your Aunt Lucy's famous old desk to give me a clue.
O, Len, the very back of you is enchanting!"

Ellen turned to laugh at Charlotte Ruston's characteristic fervour of
expression. "I remember you are always admiring people's backs," she
observed.

"Yes, they're often so much more interesting than their faces. But
yours--merely gives promise of what the face fulfills! Forgive me,
Len,--you know when I haven't seen you for ages I have to tell you
what I think of you. In here? Oh, what an adorable room!"

It was Ellen's own. She was thinking rapidly. Dr. John Leaver occupied
one of her two guest-rooms, Amy Mathewson the other. She should have to
turn Bob out of the bachelor's room, and send him down to stay with
Cynthia. But Miss Ruston put an end to her planning at once by adding:

"I can't even sleep under your roof, Len, for I've engaged my berth on
the sleeper to-night. I'm always in such anxiety about Granny when I get
her away from her quiet corner. Now let me make myself clean with all
haste, that I may not lose a minute of this happy day with you."

She was as good as her word, and in five minutes was looking as fresh as
the fortunate possessor of much rich and youthful bloom can be at a touch
of soap and water. She gave her hostess a second embrace, laying a cheek
like a June rose against Ellen's more delicately tinted cheek, and
murmuring:

"I never can tell you how I have missed you since that all-conquering
husband of yours brought you off up North. By the way, is that his
photograph?"

She was looking over Ellen's shoulder at a picture in an ivory-and-silver
frame upon the dressing-table. She answered her own question.

"Of course it is. I'd know by the look of him that he must be Red Pepper
Burns." She went over and examined the pictured face closely. "I could
make a better picture of him than that,--I know it without seeing him in
the flesh. What a splendid pair of eyes! Do they look right down into
your inmost thoughts--or do they see only as far as your liver? Fine
head, good mouth, straight nose, chin like a stone wall! Goodness! do you
never meet up with that chin?"

She looked around at Ellen with mischief in her bright brown eyes.

"Of course I do! Would you have a man chinless?"

"Luckily, you have a determined little round chin of your own," Miss
Ruston observed. "And you're happy with him? Yes, I can see it in your
face. Well, now, shall w