people; and that if she would have you, mother would be sick in bed
over it. Oh Laddie!"

"Precisely!"

"What are you going to do?"

"That I must find out."

"When it will make so much trouble, why not forget her, and go on like
you did before she came? Then, all of us were happy. Now, it makes me
shiver to think what will happen."

"Me too," said Laddie. "But look here, Little Sister, right in my
face. Will you ever forget the Princess?"

"Never!"

"Then how can you ask me to?"

"I didn't mean forget her, exactly. I meant not come here and do
things that will make every one unhappy."

"One minute, Chick-a-Biddy," said Laddie. Sometimes he called me that,
when he loved me the very most of all. I don't believe any one except
me ever heard him do it. "Let me ask you this: does our father love
our mother?"

"Love her?" I cried. "Why he just loves her to death! He turns so
white, and he suffers so, when her pain is the worst. Love her? And
she him? Why, don't you remember the other day when he tipped her head
against him and kissed her throat as he left the table; that he asked
her if she 'loved him yet,' and she said right before all of us, 'Why
Paul, I love you, until I scarcely can keep my fingers off you!'
Laddie, is it like that with you and the Princess?"

"It is with me," said Laddie. "Not with the Princess! Now, can I
forget her? Can I keep away from even the chance to pass her on the
road?"

"No," I said. "No, you can't, Laddie. But can you ever make her love
you?"

"It takes time to find that out," said Laddie. "I have got to try; so
you be a woman and keep my secret a little while longer, until I find a
way out, but don't bother your head about it!"

"I can't help bothering my head, Laddie. Can't you make her understand
that God is not a myth?"

"I'm none too sure what I believe myself," said Laddie. "Not that
there is no God--I don't mean that--but I surely don't believe all
father's teachings."

"If you believe God, do other little things matter, Laddie?"

"I think not," said Laddie, "else Heaven would be all Methodists. As
for the Princess, all she has heard in her life has been against there
being a God. Now, she is learning something on the other side. After
a while she can judge for herself. It is for us, who profess to be a
Christian family, to prove to her why we believe in God, and what He
does for us."

"Well, she would think He could do a good deal,