dies
which my gifted friend fears to touch."

"You?" said papa, in surprise.

"Why not, dear?" interposed mamma. "Amy's youth is against her, but the
fact is she can count and she can draw, and I am not afraid to recommend
her, though she is only a chit of fifteen, as to her spelling."

"Going on sixteen, mamma, if you please, and nearly there," Amy
remarked, drawing herself up to her fullest height, at which we all
laughed merrily.

"I taught school myself at sixteen," our mother went on, "and though it
made me feel like twenty-six, I had no trouble with thirty boys and
girls of all ages from four to eighteen. You must remember me, my love,
in the old district school at Elmwood."

"Yes," said papa, "and your overpowering dignity was a sight for gods
and men. All the same you were a darling."

"So she is still." And we pounced upon her in a body and devoured her
with kisses, the sweet little mother.

"Papa," Amy proceeded, when order had been restored, "why not take us
when you go to interview the judge? Then he can behold his future
schoolma'ams, arrange terms, and settle the thing at once. I presume
Grace is anxious as I am to begin her career, now that it looms up
before her. I am in the mood of the youth who bore through snow and ice
the banner with the strange device, 'Excelsior.'"

"In the mean time, good people," said Frances, appearing in the doorway,
"luncheon is served."

We had a pretty new dish--new to us--for luncheon, and as everybody may
not know how nice it is, I'll just mention it in passing.

Take large ripe tomatoes, scoop out the pulp and mix it with finely
minced canned salmon, adding a tiny pinch of salt. Fill the tomatoes
with this mixture, set them in a nest of crisp green lettuce leaves, and
pour a mayonnaise into each ruby cup. The dish is extremely dainty and
inviting, and tastes as good as it looks. It must be very cold.

"But," Doctor Raeburn said, in reply to a remark of mother's that she
was pleased the girls had decided on teaching, it was so womanly and
proper an employment for girls of good family, "I must insist that the
'interpretations' be not entirely dropped. I'll introduce you, my dear,"
he said, "when you give your first recital, and that will make it all
right in the eyes of Highland."

"Thank you, doctor," said Grace. "I would rather have your sanction than
anything else in the world, except papa's approval."

"Why don't your King's Daughters give Grace a boom?