give it to you some other day."

"So you can. Keep it until I am fortunate enough to meet you again. I shall probably get on without it until then."

So with a smile and a backward nod and glance, we part.

For some time after he has left us, Billy and I move on together without speaking, a most unusual thing, when I break the silence by my faltering tones.

"Billy," I say, trembling with hope and fear, "Billy tell me the truth. That time, you know, did I show very much of my leg?"

"Not more than an inch or two above the garter," he answers, in an encouraging tone, and for a full minute I feel that with cheerfulness I could attend the funeral of my brother Billy.

I am mortified to the last degree. Unbidden tears rise to my eyes. Even though I might have known a more soothing answer to be false, still with rapture I would have hailed it. There is a brutal enjoyment of the scene in his whole demeanor that stings me sorely. I begin to compare dear Roly with my younger brother in a manner highly unflattering to the latter. If Roland had been here in Billy's place today, instead of being as he always is with that tiresome regiment in some forgotten corner, all might have been different. He at least being a man, would have felt for me. How could I have been mad enough to look for sympathy from a boy?

Dear Roland! The only fault he has is his extreme and palpable selfishness. But what of that? Are all men so afflicted? Why should he be condemned for what is only to be expected and looked for in the grander sex? What I detest more than anything else is a person who, while professing to be friends with one, only---I grow morose, and decline all further conversation, until we come so near our home that but one turn more hides it from our view.

Here Billy remonstrates.

"Of course you can sulk if you like," he says in an injured tone, "and not speak to a fellow, all for nothing; but you can't go into the house with your arm like that unless you wish them to discover the battle in which you have been engaged."

I hesitate and look ruefully at my arm. The sleeve of my dress is rolled up above the elbow, having refused obstinately to come down over the bandage, and consequently I present a disheveled, not to say startling appearance.

"I must undo it, I suppose," I return, disinclination in my 

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