her moving about in the apartment overhead, and they correctly assumed that she was packing, preparatory for her departure to Newport.

Gloria sighed: “I wonder why Gwen is so unlike our mother and father?” she said.

“I have it,” Bobs cried, whirling about with eyes laughingly aglow. “She’s a changeling! A discontented nurse girl wished to wreak vengeance upon Mother for having discharged her, or something like that, and so she stole the child who really was our sister and left this——”

“Don’t, Bobsie!” Lena May protested. “Even if Gwen is selfish, maybe we are to blame. She was ill for so long after Mother died that we couldn’t bear the thought of having two deaths, and so we rather spoiled her. I believe that if we meet her contrariness with love and are very patient we may find the gold that must be in her nature, since she is our mother’s child.”

“You can do it, if it’s do-able, Lena May,” Bobs declared. “Now, Gloria, break the glad news! When do we hit the trail for the big town?”

“I’m going in tomorrow to find a place for us to live. If you girls wish, you may accompany me.”

“Wish? Why, all the king’s oxen and all the king’s men couldn’t keep me from going.”

Gloria smiled at her hoidenish sister but refrained from commenting on her language. She was so thankful that there was only one Gwen in the family that she could overlook lesser failings. Bobs was taking the mishap that had befallen them as a great adventure, but even she did not dream of the truly exciting adventures that lay before them.

CHAPTER II. A PROPOSAL

A PROPOSAL

Soon after daybreak the next morning, down a deserted country road, two thoroughbred horses were galloping neck and neck.

“Gee along, Star,” Bobs was shouting. She had lost her hat a mile back and her short hair, which would ripple, though she tried hard to brush out the natural curls, was tossed about her head, making her look more hoidenish than ever.

Dick, on his slender brown horse, gradually won a lead and was a length ahead when they reached the Twin Oaks, which for many years had been their trysting place. Roberta and Dick had been playmates and then pals, squabbling and making up, ever since the pinafore days, more, however, like two boys than 

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