he remarked, "you've changed a lot in three months. I always
thought that, if you had a chance, there'd be no telling where you'd end
up."

"That doesn't sound very complimentary," said Cynthia. She had, indeed,
changed. "In what terrible place do you think I'll end up?"

"I suppose you'll marry one of these Boston men."

"Oh," she laughed, "that wouldn't be so terrible, would it?"

"I believe you're engaged to one of 'em now," he remarked, looking very
hard at her.

"If you believed that, I don't think you would say it," she answered.

"I can't make you out. You used to be so frank with me, and now you're
not at all so. Are you going to Coniston for the holidays?"

Her face fell at the question.

"Oh, Bob," she cried, surprising him utterly by a glimpse of the real
Cynthia, "I wish I were--I wish I were! But I don't dare to."

"Don't dare to?"

"If I went, I should' never come back--never. I should stay with Uncle
Jethro. He's so lonesome up there, and I'm so lonesome down here, without
him. And I promised him faithfully I'd stay a whole winter at school in
Boston."

"Cynthia," said Bob, in a strange voice as he leaned toward her, "do
you--do you care for him as much as all that?"

"Care for him?" she repeated.

"Care for--for Uncle Jethro?"

"Of course I care for him," she cried, her eyes flashing at the thought.
"I love him better than anybody in the world. Certainly no one ever had
better reason to care for a person. My father failed when he came to
Coniston--he was not meant for business, and Uncle Jethro took care of
him all his life, and paid his debts. And he has taken care of me and
given me everything that a girl could wish. Very few people know what a
fine character Uncle Jethro has," continued Cynthia, carried away as she
was by the pent-up flood of feeling within her. "I know what he has done
for others, and I should love him for that even if he never had done
anything for me."

Bob was silent. He was, in the first place, utterly amazed at this
outburst, revealing as it did a depth of passionate feeling in the girl
which he had never suspected, and which thrilled him. It was unlike her,
for she was usually so self-repressed; and, being unlike her, accentuated
both sides of her character the more.

But what was he to say of the defence of Jethro Bass? Bob was not a young
man who had pondered much over the problems of life, because these
problems had hitherto never touched him. But now he