of his twin-sister's hands. It was not a handsome and well-illustrated volume, like those now in vogue, but it was bound in dull boards, and the woodcuts were fantastically hideous. To Molly Baron, who had never seen anything better, such a volume brought delight. She loved reading, while Roy hated it, unless he found a book about battles.

Molly had a pale little face, with large anxious black eyes, and short dark hair, brushed smoothly back. She wore a frock of thick blue stuff, short-waisted and low-necked, while her thin brown arms were bare.

Nobody else was in the schoolroom, which served also as a playroom for the two children. Its furniture was scanty, including no easy-chairs or footstools, but only straight-backed hard-seated chairs and backless wooden stools. Mrs. Baron was a mother unusually given to the expression of tender feeling, in a sterner age than this of ours; but even she never dreamt of permitting her children opportunities for lounging. They had to grow up straight-backed, whatever might befall.

In this room Roy and Molly had done all their lessons together, till Roy reached the age of nine years; and the day on which he began to attend a day-school had witnessed the first deep desolation of little Molly's heart. An ever-present dread was upon her of the coming time—she knew it must come—when he would be sent away to a boarding-school, and she would be left alone. But as yet no date had been named to her, and she hugged the present condition of affairs, trying to believe that it would go on indefinitely.

Since Molly had read the book at least six times already, she made no protest, but simply waited to hear the news.

"Guess what's going to happen. Guess, Molly."

"How can I tell? What sort of thing?"

"I'm going to France—to Paris!"

Roy turned head over heels, and came right side up again.

"Why? What for? Why are we going?"

"I didn't say you. I said I was. Papa and mamma mean to take me with them. And Den too."

"And not—me!"

Molly held up her head resolutely, trying not to let even her lips quiver. She gazed hard at the opposite wall.

Roy was far too much absorbed with his own prospects to notice her distress. To leave Molly for the delights of foreign travel meant nothing to him, though, had she been the one to go, and he the one to stay behind, he would no doubt have felt differently. In all their lives the twins had never yet been separated for more than one or two nights. Naturally, however, when the first real separation came, it would mean more to the girl than to the boy. Roy had to the full a boy's love of novelty.

"We shall go over the sea, and then I shall know how the sailors feel. If I wasn't going to be a soldier I should want to be a sailor; but of course I'm going to be what papa and Den are, and I like that best, only I've got to wait longer for it. And we shall stay in Paris, and there will be mounseers everywhere. Won't that be funny? And I shall write and tell you all about it"—as her silence dawned upon him. "And you'll have Jack and Polly, you know."

"If I was going to Paris, would you think Jack and Polly enough instead?" demanded Molly, out of her sore heart, still staring fixedly at the wall. A great lump was struggling in her throat.

"But you're not going, and I am. And you and Jack can have fun together."

"Jack's grown up; he isn't a boy, like you." Molly would have liked much to add, "He isn't my twin, Roy," but at the bare idea of saying such words her whole heart seemed to rise up in one huge billow, and very nearly swamped her self-control. She had to clench her hands and to bite her lips fiercely. If Roy did not care about leaving her, she was not going to let him see that she cared about losing him.

Roy seated himself astride on a chair, with his face to the back, and told his tale. He described his position outside the drawing-room window, and related the stray words which had reached his ears, making no secret of the fact that he had done his best to hear more. A glitter appeared in Molly's eyes, as she listened, and when the story was ended she said, with a catch of her breath—

"I think I shouldn't be so glad to go if—if you—weren't going too. And I shouldn't like to be you, to have listened on the sly. It was mean."

Roy sat motionless. That view of the matter had not yet occurred to him. He dismissed Molly's first words as unimportant, being merely a girl's unreasonable view of things, with which he as a boy could not be expected to agree. But that he—Roy Baron, son of a Colonel in His Majesty's Guards—should be accused of "meanness!" The word stung sharply. Roy always pictured his own future in connection with a scarlet coat, a three-cornered cocked hat, a beautiful pigtail, and the stiffest of military stocks to hold up his chin. He knew something of a soldier's sense of honour, and even now he felt ready to fight his country's battles. And that he should be accused of meanness—and by a girl!

"I do think so," Molly added. "It was horridly mean. Prying into what you weren't meant to hear! And then coming and telling me! If I had done such a thing, you'd have been the first to call it mean."

Roy stood bolt upright.

"You needn't have said it to me like that!" he said. "You might have told me, Molly—different, somehow. But I wouldn't be mean for anything, and I'm going to tell papa, straight off."

Roy did not ask Molly to go with him, and she was keenly sensible of the omission. He marched off alone, carrying his head as high as if the military stock had already encircled his throat. When he went into the drawing-room there was a pause in the conversation; and this seemed to show that Molly was in the right. She might be cross, but perhaps she had judged correctly.

"Run away, Roy," the Colonel said. "We did not send for you, and we are busy."

"Please, sir, may I say something first?" Roy advanced unfalteringly, and stood in front of the Colonel.

"Well, be quick, my boy. You are interrupting us."

Roy's honest grey eyes met his father's. "I was out there," he said, pointing to the verandah. "And I heard something. I didn't think about its being a secret, and I listened. I heard about going to Paris, and I—I went and told Molly. And she said it was mean of me. And I—couldn't be mean, sir!"

"No, Roy, you couldn't," the Colonel answered with gravity, while delighted at the boy's openness.

"I didn't mean any harm; but I suppose I oughtn't to have listened. I won't ever again, sir."

"Well, yes; of course that was wrong," the Colonel said, with a careful choice of words. "You should have told us that you were there. And you must not look upon the plan as—ahem—as quite settled. We are merely discussing it; and we might change our intentions——"

"I am sure, my dear sir, I heartily wish you would," chimed in Mrs. Bryce.

The Colonel made her a stately bow.

"And if I had found you out, Roy, overhearing us, I should certainly have blamed you. But as you have voluntarily confessed it, I"—the Colonel hesitated, conscious of his wife's pleading gaze—"well, we need say no more about the matter. You have acted rightly in coming at once to me; and I am convinced that you will not do such a thing again. Now you may run away."

Roy bounded off in the best of spirits, and Mrs. Bryce remarked, "There is an opportunity to give up your scheme. Best possible punishment for the boy. Were he my boy he should suffer for his behaviour."

"But Roy is my son," the Colonel said, and there was an accent of pride in his voice.

The pretty girl, with tall feathers in her bonnet, glided softly out of the room after Roy. She did not follow him far. She saw him vanish in the direction of the garden, flourishing his heels like a young colt, and she went the other way, towards the school-room. For Roy had told Molly about the Paris plan, and Polly guessed what that would