Oh, how eagerly Adah turned toward her now, the glad thought flashing

upon her that possibly she meant George. Maybe he'd come home.

"Whom did you see?" she asked, her eyes fixed wistfully on Ellen, who

replied: "Oh, a great many. There was Mr. Reed, and Mr. Benedict, and Mr. Ward,

and--well, I saw the most of Dr. Richards, perhaps. Do you know either

of them?"

"No, I never heard of them before," was the reply, so frankly spoken

that Ellen was confounded, for she felt sure that Dr. Richards was a

name entirely new to Adah.

"I thought you were mistaken," 'Lina said, when the dress was taken off

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and Adah gone. "A man such as you describe the doctor would not care for

a poor girl like Adah. Is his home at New York, and are you sure he'll

be at Saratoga?"

"He said so; and I think he told me his mother and sisters were in some

such place as Snow-down, or Snow-something."

"Snowdon," suggested 'Lina. "That's where Alice Johnson lives. I must

tell you of her."

"Alice Johnson," Ellen repeated; "why, that's the girl father says so

much about. Of course I fell in the scale, for there was nothing like

Alice, Alice--so beautiful, so religious."

"Religious!" and 'Lina laughed scornfully. "Adah pretends to be

religious, too, and so does Sam, while Alice will make three. Pleasant

prospects ahead. I wonder if she's the blue kind--thinks dancing wicked,

and all that."

Ellen could not tell. She thought it queer that Mrs. Johnson should send

her to a stranger, as it were, when they would have been so glad to

receive her. "Pa won't like it a bit, and she'd be so much more

comfortable with us," and Ellen glanced contemptuously around at the

neat but plainly-furnished room.

It was not the first time Ellen had offended by a similar remark, and

'Lina flared up at once. Mrs. Johnson knew her mother well, and knew to

whom she was committing her daughter.

"Did she know Hugh, too?" hot-tempered Ellen asked, sneeringly,

whereupon there ensued a contest of words touching Hugh, in which

Rocket, the Ladies' Fair, and divers other matters figured

conspicuously, and when, ten minutes later, Ellen left the house, she

carried with her the square-necked bertha, together with sundry other

little articles of dress, which she had lent for patterns, and the two

were, on the whole, as angry as a sandy-haired and black-eyed girl could

be.

"What a stupid I was to say such hateful things of Hugh, when I really

do like him," was Ellen's comment as she galloped away, while 'Lina

muttered: "I stood up for Hugh once, anyhow. To think of her twitting me

about our house, when everybody says the colonel is likely to fail any

day," and 'Lina ran off upstairs to indulge in a fit of crying over what

she called Nell Tiffton's meanness.




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