s came tripping up, book in hand.

"Your uncle wants you fixed up a bit," she said, "and as you have
nothing here I have looked up a few things. Let me fasten the tucker in
your frock. There, that does look better. Madam Royall is quite dressy,
like all fashionable people who go out and have company. I'm not much of
a hand to fix up children, seeing that for years I have had none of it
to do. But I guess I can manage to tie the sash. There, I think that
will do."

"Oh, how lovely! How good of you, Miss Recompense."

Recompense Gardiner hated to take the credit for anything she had not
done, but she had to let it go now.

"How to get this ribbon in your hair! I think it is too wide."

"Oh, can I have that too? Well, you see, you take up the curls this way
and put the ribbon under. Can it be folded? Then you tie it on the top."

Miss Recompense did not make a very artistic bow, but Doris looked in
the glass of the dressing table, and pulled and patted it a little, and
said it was right and that she was a thousand times grateful.

The sober-minded woman admitted within herself that the child was
greatly improved. Perhaps gay attire _did_ foster vanity, yet it was
pleasant for others to look upon.

"Run down and ask your uncle if you will do," exclaimed Miss Recompense,
feeling that by his approval she would discharge her conscience from the
sin, if sin it were.

She looked so dainty as she came and stood by him, and asked her
question with such a bewitching flush, that he kissed her on the
forehead for approval. But she put her soft young arms about his neck
and kissed him back, and he held her there with a strange new warmth
stirring his heart.

The old Royall house in Summer Street went its way three-quarters of a
century ago. No one dreams now of the beautiful garden that surrounded
it, and the blossoming shrubbery and beds of flowers from which nosegays
were sent to friends, and the fruit distributed later on. It was an old
house then, a great square, two-story building with a cupola railed
around a flat place at the point of the roof, or what would have been
the point if carried up. There were some rooms built out at the back,
and an arbor--a covered sort of _allee_ where the ladies sat and sewed
at times and the children played. Thirty years before there had been
many a meeting of friends to discuss the state of affairs. There had
been disagreements, ruptures, quarrels made and healed. George Royall
had g