not ask, like May, why he did not count himself sacrificed. She
only said shyly and wistfully, "I knew it was out of the question, but
if it had not been so, or if there had been any other way, it would have
been such a boon to poor May not to be torn from home." At the harrowing
picture thus conjured up her voice fairly shook, and the tears started
into her dovelike eyes.

"Home," he said impatiently, "is not everything; at least, not the home
from which every boy must go, as a matter of course. 'Torn from home' in
order to go to school! Surely the first part of the sentence is tall
language."

"It is neither too tall nor too strong where May is concerned," said
Dora, rousing herself to plead May's cause. "She has not been away from
home and from father--especially from mother, and one or other of the
rest of us, for longer than a week since she was born."

"Then the sooner she begins the better for her," he said brutally, as it
sounded to himself, to the loving, shrinking girl he was addressing.

"She has always been the little one, the pet," urged Dora; "she will not
know what to do without some of us to take care of her and be good to
her."

"But she must go away some day," he continued his remonstrance. "How old
is your sister?"

"She was seventeen last Christmas," Dora answered shamefacedly.

"Why, many a woman is married before she is May's age," he protested.
"Many a woman has left her native country, gone among strangers, and had
to maintain her independence and dignity unaided, by the time she was
seventeen. Queen Charlotte was not more than sixteen when she landed in
England and married George the Third."

Dora could not help laughing, as he meant her to do. "May and Queen
Charlotte! they are as far removed as fire and water. But," she answered
meekly, "I know the Princess Royal was no older when she went to Berlin;
and poor Marie Antoinette was a great deal younger, as May would have
reminded me if she had been here, in the old days when she travelled
from Vienna to Paris. But there--it is all so different. They were
princesses from whom a great deal is expected, and the Princess Royal
was the eldest instead of the youngest of the Queen's children."

"Does seniority make so great a difference?" he said, with an inflection
of his voice which she noticed, though he hastened to make her forget it
by speaking again gravely the next minute. "Should May not learn to
stand alone? Would it not be dwarfing