rooms, and kept the doors open between. It isn't healthy to sleep with closed doors."

   "Healthy! Healthy! I don't hear anything else from morning till night when I'm in the house."

   "You can't hear very much of it, then."

   "I should think, Sophia Maybury, you wanted to live forever!"

   "Goodness knows I don't!" cried Mrs. Maybury, bursting into tears. And that night she shut her bedroom door and opened the window, and sneezed worse than ever all day afterward, in spite of the fact that Mrs. Cairnes had put all her cherished plants into the dining-room alcove.

   "I can't imagine what has changed Julia so," sighed Mrs. Maybury. "She used to be so bright and sweet and good-tempered. And now I really don't know what sort of an answer I'm to have to anything I say. It keeps my nerves stretched on the

    qui vive

   all day. I am so disappointed. I am sure the Doctor would be very unhappy if he knew how I felt."

   But Mrs. Maybury had need to pity herself; Julia didn't pity her. "She's been made a baby of so long," said Julia, "that now she really can't go alone." And perhaps she was a little bitterer about it than she would have been had Captain Cairnes ever made a baby of her in the least, at any time.

   They were sitting together one afternoon, a thunderstorm of unusual severity having detained Mrs. Cairnes at home, and the conversation had been more or less acrimonious, as often of late. Just before dusk there came a great burst of sun, and the whole heavens were suffused with splendor.

   "O Julia! Come here, come quick, and see this sunset!" cried Mrs. Maybury. But Julia did not come. "Oh! I can't bear to have you lose it," urged the philanthropic lover of nature again. "There! It's streaming up the very zenith. I never saw such color—do come."

   "Mercy, Sophia! You're always wanting people to leave what they're about and see something! My lap's full of worsteds."

   "Well," said Sophia. "It's for your own sake. I don't

   know that it will do me any good. Only if one enjoys beautiful sights."

   "Dear me! Well, there! Is that all? I don't see anything remarkable. The idea 

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