healthy," urged Mrs. Maybury.

   "Oh, well! I can't be getting a new carpet every day."

   "You feel," said Mrs. Maybury, turning away wrath, "as you did when you were a little girl, and the teacher told you to lay your wet slate in your lap: 'It'll take the fade out of my gown,' said you. How long ago is it! Does it seem as if it were you and I?"

   "I don't know," said Julia tartly. "I don't bother myself much with abstractions. I know it is you and I." And she put her things on the hall-rack, as she was going out again in the afternoon to bible-class.

   She had no sooner gone out than Mrs. Maybury went and strung up every curtain in the house where the sun was shining, and sat down triumphantly and rocked contentedly for five minutes in the glow, when her conscience overcame her, and she put them all down again, and went out into the kitchen for a little comfort from Allida. But Allida had gone out, too; so she came back to the sitting-room, and longed for the stir and bustle and frequent faces of the tavern, and welcomed a book-canvasser presently as if she had been a dear friend.

   Perhaps Julia's conscience stirred a little, too; for she came home earlier than usual, put away her wraps, lighted an extra lamp, and said, "Now we'll have a long, cosy evening to ourselves."

   "We might have a little game of cards," said Sophia, timidly. "I know a capital double solitaire—"

   "Cards!" cried Julia.

   "Why—why not?"

   "Cards! And I just came from bible-class!"

   "What in the world has that got to do with it?"

   "Everything!"

   "Why, the Doctor and I used—"

   "That doesn't make it any better."

   "Why, Julia, you can't possibly mean that there's any harm,—that,—that it's wicked—"

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