a vase crashed to the floor from a table,
shattering into many pieces.

"Oh!" cried Alice, aghast, as she stood looking at the ruin she had
unwittingly wrought. "Oh, dear, and daddy was so fond of that vase!"

"There, you see what you've done!" exclaimed Ruth, who, though only
seventeen, and but two years older than her sister, was of a much
more sedate disposition. "I told you not to dance!"

"You did nothing of the sort, Ruth DeVere. You just stood and looked
at me, and you wouldn't join in, and maybe if you had this wouldn't
have happened--and--and--"

She did not finish, her voice trailing off rather dismally as she
stooped to pick up the pieces of the vase.

"It can't be mended, either," she went on, and when she looked up the
merry brown eyes were veiled in a mist of tears. Ruth's heart
softened at once.

"There, dear!" she said in consoling tones. "Of course you couldn't
help it. Don't worry. Daddy won't mind when you tell him you were
just doing a little waltz of happiness because he has an engagement
at last."

She, too, stooped and her light hair mingled with the dark brown
tresses of her sister as they gathered up the fragments.

"I don't care!" announced Alice, finally, as she sank into a chair.
"I'll tell dad myself. I'm glad, anyhow, even if the vase is broken.
I never liked it. I don't see why dad set such store by the old
thing."

"You forget, Alice, that it was one of--"

"Mother's--yes, I know," and she sighed. "Father gave it to her when
they were married, but really, mother was like me--she never cared
for it."

"Yes, Alice, you are much as mother was," returned Ruth, with gentle
dignity. "You are growing more like her every day."

"Am I, really?" and in delight the younger girl sprang up, her grief
over the vase for the moment forgotten. "Am I really like her, Ruth?
I'm so glad! Tell me more of her. I scarcely remember her. I was only
seven when she died, Ruth."

"Eight, my dear. You were eight years old, but such a tiny little
thing! I could hold you in my arms."

"You couldn't do it now!" laughed Alice, with a downward glance at
her plump figure. Yet she was not over-plump, but with the rounding
curves and graces of coming womanhood.

"Well, I couldn't hold you long," laughed Ruth. "But I wonder what is
keeping daddy? He telephoned that he would come right home. I'm so
anxious to have him tell us all about it!"

"So am I. Probably he had to stay to arrange about rehearsals,"