rgaret, clinging there, "do
you want me to go--shall I go? I've always been so happy here, and I
feel so ashamed of being discontented,--and I don't deserve a thing
like this to happen to me!"

"Why, God bless her heart!" said Mrs. Paget, tenderly, "of course
you'll go!"

"Oh, you silly! I'll never speak to you again if you don't!" laughed
Julie, through sympathetic tears.

Theodore and Duncan immediately burst into a radiant reminiscence of
their one brief visit to New York; Rebecca was heard to murmur that
she would "vithet Mark thome day"; and the baby, tugging at his
mother's elbow, asked sympathetically if Mark was naughty, and was
caught between his sister's and his mother's arms and kissed by them
both. Mr. Paget, picking his paper from the floor beside his chair,
took an arm-chair by the fire, stirred the coals noisily, and while
cleaning his glasses, observed rather huskily that the little girl
always knew, she could come back again if anything went wrong.

"But suppose I don't suit?" suggested Margaret, sitting back on
her heels, refreshed by tears, and with her arms laid across
her mother's lap.

"Oh, you'll suit," said Julie, confidently; and Mrs. Paget smoothed
the girl's hair back and said affectionately, "I don't think she'll
find many girls like you for the asking, Mark!"

"Reading English with the two little girls," said Margaret, dreamily,
"and answering notes and invitations. And keeping books--"

"You can do that anyway," said her father, over his paper.

"And dinner lists, you know, Mother--doesn't it sound like an English
story!" Margaret stopped in the middle of an ecstatic wriggle.
"Mother, will you pray I succeed?" she said solemnly.

"Just be your own dear simple self, Mark," her mother advised.
"January!" she added, with a great sigh. "It's the first break,
isn't it, Dad? Think of trying to get along without our Mark!"

"January!" Julie was instantly alert. "Why, but you'll need all sorts
of clothes!"

"Oh, she says there's a sewing woman always in the house," Margaret
said, almost embarrassed by the still-unfolding advantages of the
proposition. "I can have her do whatever's left over." Her father
lowered his paper to give her a shrewd glance.

"I suppose somebody knows something about this Mrs. Carr-Boldt,
Mother?" asked he. "She's all right, I suppose?"

"Oh, Dad, her name's always in the papers," Julie burst out; and the
mother smiled as she said, "We'll be pretty sure of