so, the present doorkeeper would like to see Mrs. Cromwell Craggs."

Then came the turn of the fat lady to be laughed at; but out she had to go and get kissed like the rest of us. Before the close of the evening Billy was made as jealous as his parents and I were surprised to see Daniel in close conversation with Miss Pilgrim among the geraniums and fuchsias of the conservatory.

"A regular flirtation," said Billy, somewhat indignantly. The conclusion which they arrived at was that after all no great harm had been done, and that the dear little fellow ought not to be peached on for his fun. If I had known at the time how easily they forgave him, I should have suspected that the offence Billy had led Daniel into committing was not unlikely to be repeated on the offender's own account; but so much as I could see showed me that the ice was broken.

Billy's jealousy did not outlast the party. He became more and more interested in "his girl," and often went in the afternoon, after getting out of school, ostensibly to play with Jimmy. Daniel's calls, according to adult etiquette, made in the evening, did not interfere with my younger nephew's, and as neither knew that the other, after his fashion, was his most uncompromising rival, my position, as the confidant of both, was one of extreme delicacy. But the matter was more speedily settled than I expected.

Billy came to me one day and told me that he intended to get married immediately; that he was going to speak to his Lottie that very afternoon. He was prepared to meet every objection. He had asked his father if he might, and his father said yes, if he had money enough to support a wife—and Billy thought he had. He'd saved up all the money his Uncle Jim and Aunt Jane had sent him for Christmas; and besides, if he were once married, his father wouldn't see him want for stamps, he knew. Then, too, he was going to leave school and be a merchant next year—and I'd help him now and then, if he got hard up, wouldn't I? If he were driven to it, he could be a good boy again, and save up the money to buy Lottie presents with, instead of giving it to nasty old "Objecks." He was so much older than when he had the savings-bank that he ought to have at least ten cents a day now for being good; didn't I think that was fair? As to his age, if Lottie loved him, he didn't care—anyway he would be lots bigger than she was before long—and he'd often heard his ma say she approved of early marriages; hers and pa's was one. So he ran off up Livingston Place, the most undaunted lover that ever put an extra shine on his proposal boots, or spent half an hour on the bow of his popping necktie.

Shortly after, Daniel went into the street. Not meaning to call upon his inamorata, but drawn by the irresistible fascination of passing her house, he strolled in the direction that Billy had gone. As he came to the Rumbullions', something suddenly bade him enter—a whim he called it, but not his own—one of the whims of destiny which are always gratified.

"Yes, sir," said the servant, "Miss Pilgrim is in, I will call her."

His step was always light. He passed noiselessly into the front parlor and sat down among the heavy brocatelle curtains which shadowed the recess of one of the windows. He supposed Miss Pilgrim to be upstairs, and while his heart fluttered, expecting her footfall at the particular door, he heard an earnest boyish voice in the inside room. Looking from his concealment he beheld Miss Pilgrim on a sofa in the pier and sitting by her side, with her hand clasped in his, his brother Billy. Before he could avoid it, he became aware that Billy was unconsciously but eagerly forestalling him.

"Now, Lottie, my dear Lottie! I wish you would! I'll do everything I can to make you happy. If you'll only marry me, I'll be good all the time! Come now! Say yes! Father's got a really nice place over the stable—they only use it for a tool room now; we could clear it out and have it scrubbed and go to housekeeping right away. Ma'd let us have all her old set of chinai I've got a silver mug Uncle Teddy gave me and a napkin ring and four spoons. As soon as I make my money I'll buy a nice carriage and horses, any color you want 'em. Oh, my darling, darling Lottie, I do love you so much and we could have such a splendid time! Do say yes, Lottie—please, do please!"

Miss Pilgrim looked at the earnest little suitor with a face in which tender interest and compassion quite overrode any sense of the whimsicality of the situation which might lurk there. Daniel's astonishment at the sight was so great that he realized the entire state of the case before he could recover himself sufficiently to rise and go into the back room.

Billy jumped up and looked defiantly at the intruder. Miss Pilgrim blushed violently, but turned away her head to avoid the exhibition of a still more convulsing emotion than embarrassment.

"I must beg your pardon, Miss Pilgrim—and yours, too, Billy," began Daniel in a hesitating way, hardly knowing how to treat the posture in which he found things, "but—you see—the fact is the servant said she'd go to announce me—and really when I came in, I hadn't any idea you were here, or Billy either."

"Then," said Billy, moderating the defiant attitude, "you actually weren't dodging around and trying to find out what Lottie and I were about on the sly? Well, I'll believe you. I'm sure you couldn't be as mean as that, when I'm the only brother you have got, that always brings you oranges when you're sick, and never plays ball on the stairs when you've got a headache. Now, then, I'll trust you, I've been asking Lottie to marry me, and I want you to help me. Ask her if she won't, Daniel—see if she won't do it for you!"

Miss Pilgrim had been trying to find words, but her face was too much for her and she was obliged to seek retirement in her handkerchief. As she drew it from her pocket, a well-worn piece of paper followed it and fell upon the floor. Billy picked it up before she noticed it, and was about to hand it to her, when his jealous eye fell upon a withered rosebud sewed to its margin. As he looked at it, with his little brows knit into a precocious sternness, he recognized his brother's handwriting immediately beneath the flower. It was one of the daily anonymous sonnets, of which Daniel had told me, and the bud a relic of the bouquet accompanying it. Still Daniel was silent. What else could he be?

"Very well, very well, Master Daniel!" exclaimed Billy, in a voice trembling with grief and indignation, "there's good enough reason why you won't speak a word for me. You want her yourself—here it is in your own writing. No wonder you won't tell Lottie to be my wife, when you're trying to take her away from me. Oh, Lottie, dear Lottie! I love you just as much as he does, though I don't know everything and can't write you poetry like it was out of the Fifth Reader! Daniel, how could you go and write to my Lottie this way: 'My churner'—no, it isn't churner, it's charmer,—'let me call thee mine'?"

Forgetting the sacredness of private MS. in that of private grief, he would have gone on, with a pause here and there for certainty of spelling, to the conclusion of the poem, had not Lottie sprung up, with her imploring face suffused by her discovery, for the first time, of the identity of her secret lover and the escape of his sonnet from her pocket. It was too late! There he stood before her unmistakably proved, and herself unmistakably proving in what estimation she held his verses and bouquets.

"Oh Billy, dear Billy! If you do love me, don't do so!" So exclaiming, she held out her hand, and Billy put the MS. into it with all the dignity of a wounded spirit.

"Mr. Lovegrove," said Miss Pilgrim, "I don't know what to say."

"I feel very much that way myself," said Daniel.

"I don't," said Billy, now in command of his voice. "I'll tell you what it is: perhaps Daniel didn't know how much I wanted you, Lottie—and perhaps he wants you 'most as bad as I do. But