true New Englander’s scorn of self-indulgence. But she probably did need someone to keep Elsie mended and possibly to be a sort of chaperon for her, too; for Aunt Katherine, since her inheritance, had interested herself in social and charitable work and was a very busy and even an important woman.

The two had endless conversations about Aunt Katherine and the adventures awaiting Kate. And Katherine talked more than she had ever talked before about her own girlhood in Oakdale and the little orchard house where she had always lived and where she had been so happy.

“If it isn’t rented you must go into it,” she told Kate. And then she described the rooms for her and all the important events that had happened in them. Aunt Katherine’s big newer house she hardly spoke of at all, for Kate herself was so soon to see it and know all its corners.

All the planning and sewing and the long intimate conversations about Katherine’s girlhood and bits of family history that Kate had never heard before, kept her right up to the eve of departure occupied and excited. But as bedtime approached that night she began to be shaken by unexpected qualms. She had never before been away from her mother for even one night and they had always shared adventure. That now she was actually to go off by herself into an adventure of her own seemed unnatural and almost impossible.

They were sitting on the bench out beside the big front doors, breathing in all the cool night air they could after the last hot and rather hurried day. Their faces were only palely visible to each other in the starlight. They had been silent for many minutes when Kate said suddenly, and a little huskily, “Mother, may I take the picture of the boy in the silver, flowery, dragony picture frame along to Oakdale with me to-morrow? He’s a sort of talisman of mine.”

Katherine was used to Kate’s abruptnesses and seldom showed surprise at anything anyway. But now she did show surprise, and the voice that answered Kate quivered with more than surprise.

“The silvery, flowery, dragony picture frame? And the boy? What do you know of him, Kate?”

“Why, he’s always been in the little top drawer of your desk. He’s always been there. I’ve never told you how much he meant to me. I’ve made it a secret. But I’ve known him just about as long as I can remember. I was an awfully little girl and had to climb on to a chair at first to see him. But I didn’t climb to look often. I saved it for—magic. When 

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