rry, Billy;
we shall get on, I know. Have you ever seen her?"

"Once, when she was in the knitted-sock stage of development. She wasn't
at all pretty then."

"How old is she now?"

"Hear what her father saith." And Mr. Farrington took a letter from his
breast pocket. Its creases showed signs of the frequent readings it had
received that day. As he said, he had disliked to refuse the request of
his old friend; but he disliked still more to burden his wife with this
new care which would be such an interruption to her work. Moreover, the
girl would be in his own way.

"Cicely is just sixteen now," he read, "a bright, sunny-tempered child,
and, I hope, not too badly spoiled. You will find her perfectly
independent and able to shift for herself; all I want is to have her
under proper chaperonage. I should take her with me; but the doctor has
forbidden my having the care, and I hate to put the child into a
boarding-school."

Theodora laughed, as her husband paused for breath.

"The paternal view of the case, Billy. Cicely is a nice, demure little
name; but I suspect that the young woman doesn't quite live up to it.
Still, I believe I would rather have an independent damsel than a
shrinking one. She will be more in my line."

"But do you think you ought to try it, Teddy?" her husband remonstrated.
"Won't it be too hard for you? I can just as well tell Harry to put her
into a school."

For one more instant, Mrs. Farrington wavered. Then she saw the frown
between her husband's brows, a frown of anxiety, not of discontent.

"No; it will be good for us, Billy. We are getting too staid, and we need
some child-life in the house. We can try the experiment, anyway; and it
will be easy enough to pack her off to school, after we have grown tired
of her. Will you write, to-night?"

"If you are sure you think best."

"I do; and perhaps I'd better put a note into your letter. It may make
Harry feel easier about leaving the child with strangers. He will find it
hard enough, anyway."

She crossed the room to her desk, to write the letter which was to bring
new courage to the anxious, exiled invalid. Suddenly she turned around,
with her pen in mid air.

"Billy, the hand of fate is in this. The girl may be just what
Allyn needs."

"Ye--es; only it is within the limits of possibility that they may
fight."

"Then they will have to make up again, living in such close quarters as
this. Besides, that kind of fighting isn't alto