'd you like it not to be able to go out alone? He needs
me."

"I can't go out at all."

"But he's been so for more than a year," Theodora said sharply; "and you
have only been in the house four days. I should think you could stand
that."

"I should think you could stay in, once in a while, with your own
brother," Hubert retorted. "Charity begins at home."

"But I promised Billy--"

"I don't want you. Do get out and let me alone."

As a rule, Hubert was the most even-tempered of boys. Now, however, he
felt himself aggrieved and deserted, and his tone was not altogether
amicable.

"How cross you are!" Theodora snapped.

"Oh, get out!" And Hubert turned his back on his sister and yawned.

The door closed with a bang, and he heard Theodora's feet descending the
stairway, with a vengeful thump on every step. Then he yawned again.
There was nothing on earth to do; he was not ill enough to make it
interesting, only a bore. Time was when Theodora would have stuck to him
like a burr, and they would have contrived to have some fun out of even
such untoward circumstances as this. Now she deserted him and went off
with that confounded Billy. At this point in his musings, he dropped to
sleep.

In the mean time, Billy was having a bad afternoon of it. Never had he
seen Theodora in a more fractious mood. She scolded about the road and
the heat, snubbed all his sympathetic suggestions, and contradicted all
his efforts at conversation. Under such conditions, the ride was a short
one, and it was less than an hour from the time they had started that
they reappeared in the Farringtons' drive. Theodora refused all
invitation to stop.

"Thanks; but I must get home," she said curtly, and she rode away with
her teeth set and her chin aggressively in the air, leaving Billy with
the impression that he had unintentionally stepped into a hornets' nest.

Hope was spending the day with a friend, and Mrs. McAlister was
superintending some belated house-cleaning, so that Hubert was alone, as
when she had left him. She ran directly up to his room; but, when she
saw that he was asleep, her step softened, and she stealthily advanced
to his side and sat down on the edge of the bed. Something of the mood
in which he had gone to sleep still remained, and his boyish face, even
in his dreams, was dull and unhappy. Theodora reproached herself, as she
sat looking down at him. She reproached herself more, while she looked
about at the disorderly