ad elicited her father's declaration of confidence
was a request on Di's part to be allowed the privilege of inviting a
guest of her own choosing to the Thanksgiving dinner. The family party
was to be materially reduced this year, for Mrs. Crosby's mother and
sister, their only available relatives, were at that moment sojourning
in Rome, where, if they were sufficiently mindful of current maxims
to do as the Romans do, they were very unlikely to meet with any
satisfactory combination of turkey and plum-pudding. It was with that
fact in view, that Di felt a fair degree of assurance in preferring
her request. They all liked each other, of course, better than they
liked anybody else, but, really, one must do something a little out of
the common on Thanksgiving day.

"Certainly," Di's mother had agreed; "you shall invite any one you
choose. I have been wishing we could think of some one to ask, but
people all have their own family parties on Thanksgiving day. Is it to
be one of your girl friends?"

"That is my secret," Di had replied, sedately; "but, whoever it is,
he, she, or it is a very important personage, and will have to be
treated with great consideration!"

"And how is that very _un_important personage, Di Crosby, going to get
hold of so great a dignitary?" Mrs. Crosby had laughingly inquired. At
which juncture Mr. Crosby had expressed his belief that Di would bag
her game.

That the prospective dinner should be incomplete was all the harder,
considering the fact that the Crosbys were, by good rights, the
possessors of that most desired ornament of such an occasion,--a _bona
fide_ grandfather. Not only was old Mr. Crosby living, and in
excellent health, but his residence was not above a dozen blocks
removed from his son's house. And yet no grandfather had ever graced
their Thanksgiving feast.

Family quarrels are an unpleasant subject at the best, and since Di
herself had never learned the precise cause of the long estrangement
between father and son, in which the old gentleman had decreed that
his son's wife and children should share, it is hardly worth while to
recount it here. Suffice it to say, that it was a very old quarrel
indeed, older than Di herself, and one to which Mr. and Mrs. Crosby
never alluded.

It was six years ago, when Di, the eldest of the children, was ten
years of age, that she had come home from school one day, breathless
with excitement.

"Mamma!" she cried, bursting into the room w