red Elizabeth timidly.

"Oh, no. Not if you like to sit still," cheerfully.

"I just do. I'm always tired. You are so pretty, I was afraid of you at
first. And you have such beautiful clothes. That blue ribbon on your hat
is like a bit of the sky. And God made the sky."

The voice died away in admiration.

"That isn't my best hat," returned Doris simply. "Cousin Betty thought
the damp of the ocean and running out in the dust would ruin it. It has
some beautiful pink roses and ever so much gauzy stuff and a great bow
of pink satin. Then I have a pink muslin frock with tiny green and brown
sprigs all over it, and a great sash of the muslin that comes down to
the hem. The Chapman girls have satin ribbon sashes, but Miss Recompense
said she liked the muslin better."

"Do you have to wear just what she says?"

"Oh, no. Madam Royall chooses some things, and Betty. And Cousin King
brought me an elegant sash, white, with flowers all over it. I have ever
so many pretty things."

"Oh, how proud you must feel!" said the Puritan maid half enviously.

"I don't know"--hesitatingly. "I think I feel just nice, and that is all
there is about it. Uncle Win likes what they get for me--men can't buy
clothes, you know, and if he is pleased and thinks I look well, that is
the end of it."

"Oh, how good it must feel to be happy just like that. But are you quite
sure," lowering her voice to a touch of awe, "that you will not be
punished in the next world?"

"What for? Doesn't God mean us to be happy?"

"Well--not in this world, perhaps," answered the young theologian. "But
you don't have anything in heaven except a white robe, and if you
haven't had any pretty things in this world----"

"I wish I could give you some of mine." Doris slipped her soft warm hand
over the other, beginning to grow bony and strained already.

"They wouldn't do me any good," was the almost apathetical reply. "I
only go to church, and mother wouldn't let me wear them."

"Do you like to go to church?"

"I hate the long sermons and the prayers. Oh, that is dreadful wicked,
isn't it? But I like to see the people and hear the talk, and they do
have some new clothes; and the sitting still. When you've run and run
all the week and are tired all over, it's just good to sit still. And
it's different. I get so tired of the same things all the time and the
hurry. Do you know what I am going to do when I am a woman?"

"No," replied Doris with a look of interest