excited to think of another thing—"

"Yes, too busy to even write to me!" interrupted Janet. "I had about one letter in two weeks from you, those days. And you'd promised to write every other day!"

"Oh well, never mind that now! You'd have done the same, I guess. If you don't let me go on, I'll never get to the secret! After a while, though, I got used to all the new things, and I'd seen all the sights, and Aunt Minerva had finished all the furnishing except the curtains and draperies (she's at that, yet!), and all of a sudden everything fell flat. I hadn't begun my music-lessons, and there didn't seem to be a thing to do, or a single interest in life.

"The truth is, Jan, I was frightfully lonesome—for[Pg 7] you!" Here Marcia felt her hand squeezed in the darkness. "Perhaps you don't realize it, but living in an apartment in a big city is the queerest thing! You don't know your neighbor that lives right across the hall. You don't know a soul in the house. And as far as I can see, you're not likely to if you lived here fifty years! Nobody calls on you as they do on a new family in the country. Nobody seems to care a rap who you are, or whether you live or die, or anything. And would you believe it, Janet, there isn't another girl in this whole apartment, either older or younger than myself! No one but grown-ups.

[Pg 7]

"So you can see how awfully lonesome I've been. And as Aunt Minerva had decided not to send me to high school till fall, I didn't have a chance to get acquainted with any one of my own age. Actually, it got so I didn't do much else but moon around and mark off the days till school in Northam closed and you could come. And, oh, I'm so glad you're here for the summer! Isn't it gorgeous!" She hugged her chum spasmodically.

[Pg 8]

[Pg 8]

"But to go on. I'm telling you all this so you can see what led up to my doing what I did about—the secret. It began one awfully rainy afternoon last month. I'd been for a walk in the wet, just for exercise, and when I came in, Aunt Minerva was out shopping. I hadn't a new book to read nor a blessed thing to do, so I sat down right here by the window and got to thinking and wondering why things were so unevenly divided—why you, Jan, should have a mother and father and a big, jolly lot of brothers and sisters, and I should be just one, all alone, living with Aunt Minerva (though she's lovely to me), with no mother, and a father away 

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