head, perplexed.

"Oh, Elsie-Honey! It's plain as pudding. Presto! change! That's all.
Aren't we both Elsie, and don't we both want just what's coming to the
other? All we have to do is to swap surnames. See?"

Still Elsie Marley did not understand.

"Shake us up in a box, you know," the other explained, her dimples very
conspicuous, "and you come out Elsie Moss and I, Elsie Marley, without
the honey. You go to live with Reverend John Middleton and I'll go to
New York and try to persuade your Cousin Julia to let her supposed
relative study for the stage. What could be better? It's simply
ripping and dead easy. Neither of them has seen either of us. Uncle
John would draw a prize instead of me, and--I'd be awfully good to your
cousin, Elsie-Honey."

Really to grasp a conception so daring and revolutionary took Elsie
Marley some time. But when she had once grasped it, she considered it
seriously. It did not seem to her, even at first, either unreasonable
or impossible. Indeed, influenced by the enthusiasm of the other girl,
she began to feel it both reasonable and fitting. In a way, too, it
was only natural. For after all, the girl had always had her way made
smooth for her, and this appeared only a continuation of that process.
She certainly _didn't_ want to go to Cousin Julia's, and she liked the
idea of living in the quiet parsonage of the aristocratic country town.

Indeed, she agreed to the proposal more readily and unquestioningly
than a girl of more imagination or experience could have done. For her
part, Elsie Moss foresaw certain complications, though in truth only
the most obvious ones. They discussed these gravely, yet with much
confidence. Indeed, an older person must have been both amused and
amazed at the youthfulness, the inexperience, and the ignorance of life
the girls exhibited, at their utter unconsciousness that they were not
qualified to act as responsible human beings and shuffle blood
relationships about like pawns on a chess-board.

"There's certainly nothing about it that even my stepmother could
object to," Elsie Moss concluded. "Nobody's being cheated: they are
both going to get what they would really choose if they had a chance,
and to escape what might be very uncomfortable, and so are we. We're
both Elsies, and about the same age, and have brown eyes: if Uncle John
were to take his pick, wouldn't he take a quiet, dignified, ladylike
Elsie, instead of a harum-scarum o