cannot make any excuse she will not see through. Your father will call on Mr. Mostyn to-morrow, and we shall get unprejudiced information.”      

       “Oh, I don’t know that, Ruth. Father is intensely American three hundred and sixty-four days and twenty-three hours in a year, and then in the odd hour he will flare up Yorkshire like a conflagration.”      

       “English, you mean?”      

       “No. Yorkshire IS England to grandmother and father. They don’t think anything much of the other counties, and people from them are just respectable foreigners. You may depend upon it, whatever grandmother says of Mr. Fred Mostyn, father will believe it, too.”      

       “Your father always believes whatever your grandmother says. Good night, dear.”      

       “Good night. I think I shall go to grandmother in the morning. I know how to manage her. I shall meet her squarely with the truth, and acknowledge that I am dying with curiosity about Mr. Mostyn.”      

       “And she will tease and lecture you, say you are ‘not sweetheart high yet, only a little maid,’ and so on. Far better go and talk with Dora. To-morrow she will need you, I am sure. Ethel, I am very sleepy. Good night again, dear.”      

       “Good night!” Then with a sudden animation, “I know what to do, I shall tell grandmother about Dora’s marriage. It is all plain enough now. Good night, Ruth.” And this good night, though dropping sweetly into the minor third, had yet on its final inflection something of the pleasant hopefulness of its major key—it expressed anticipation and satisfaction.     

       What happened in the night session she could not tell, but she awoke with a positive disinclination to ask a question about Mr. Mostyn. “I have received orders from some one,” she said to Ruth; “I simply do not care whether I ever see or hear of the man again. I am going to Dora, and I may not come home until late. You know they will depend upon me for every suggestion.”      

       In fact, Ethel did not return home until the following day, for a snowstorm came up in the afternoon, and the girl was weary with planning and writing, and well inclined to eat with Dora the delicate little dinner served to them in 

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