expect the girl to do something for her
board, but Polly would be good for a year or two more. Time did hang
heavy on her hands, and this would be interest and employment, and a
good turn. When matters were settled a little she would broach the
subject to Elizabeth.

If Winthrop Adams meant to make a great lady out of her--why, that was
all there was to it! Times were hard and there might be war. Winthrop
had a son of his own, and perhaps not so much money as people thought.
And it did seem folly to waste the child's means. If she had so
much--enough to go to boarding school--she oughtn't be living on the
Leveretts. Foster was having pretty tight squeezing to get along.

They all wondered what made Aunt Priscilla so unaggressive at supper
time. She watched Doris furtively. All the household had a smile for
her. Foster Leverett patted her soft hair, and Warren pinched her cheek
in play. Betty gave her half a dozen hugs between times, and Mrs.
Leverett smiled when Doris glanced her way.

The quarter-moon was coming up when Priscilla Perkins opened the closet
door for her things.

"I'll walk over with Aunt Priscilla," said Warren. "It's my night for
practice."

"Oh, yes." His father nodded. Warren had lately joined the band, but his
mother thought she couldn't stand the cornet round the house.

"I aint a mite afraid in the moonlight. I come so often I ought not put
anyone out."

"Now that the evenings are cool it seems lonesomer," said Mr. Leverett,
settling in his armchair by the fire, really glad his son could be
attentive without any special sacrifice.

Doris brought the queer little stool and sat down beside him. She looked
as if she had always lived there.

"You'll all spoil that child," Aunt Priscilla said to Warren when they
had stepped off the stoop.

"I don't believe there's any spoil to her," said Warren heartily. "She's
the sweetest little thing I ever saw; so wise in some ways and so
honestly ignorant in others. I never saw Uncle Win so taken--he never
seems to quite know what to do with children. And he's asked us all over
to tea some night next week. I was clear struck."

Mrs. Perkins made no reply. About once a year he invited her over to tea
with some of the old cousins, and he called on her New Year's Day, which
was not specially kept in any fashionable way.

Mrs. Perkins always said King Street, though in a burst of patriotism
the name had been changed after the Revolution. It had dropped d