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AS Dora reached this conclusion there came a
well-known knock upon the door, and unfastening
the bolt she admitted Johnnie, who had
been up many times that day, but had not before been
permitted to enter.

“O Auntie,” he cried, “you are better and I'm glad.
I didn't mean what I said about swearing, and drinking,
and smoking, and I was so mad at myself that I teased
Ben and Burt on purpose till they got hoppin', and then
I lay still while both little Arabs pitched into me. My!
didn't their feet fly like drumsticks as they kicked and
struck, and pulled my hair; but when Ben got the big
carving-fork, I concluded I'd been punished enough, and
so deserted the field! But, Auntie, I do wish you could
love father. He has looked so sorry to-day, kind of
white about the mouth, and his hand trembled this noon
when he carved the turkey. Won't you, Auntie? I've
prayed ten times this afternoon that you might, and I
begin to have faith that you will. Dr. West, who used
to talk to me so good last summer when I was in his

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Sunday-school class, said we must have faith that God
would hear us.”

Dora drew a long, sad sigh, as she wished she too had
been taught of Dr. West to pray differently from what
she knew she did. Smoothing back John's soft, dark
hair, she said:

“Johnnie, girls cannot make a love in a minute, and
this came so suddenly upon me, I must have time to think,—
six weeks or two months, and then I will decide. Will
you tell your father this for me? Tell him I'm sorry to
make him feel badly,—that I like him and always shall,
even if I am not his wife—that I know how good, how
generou she is,—that he will wait until I know my own
mind better, and then if I cannot be his, he must not
mind it.”

“I'll tell him,” Johnnie said, while Dora continued:

“And Johnnie, perhaps it had better be understood
that nothing is to be said about it in the mean time,—
nothing to me by your father.”

“Yes, I know, I see. I'll fix it,” Johnnie answered.
“I'll go to father now,” and stooping down, he kissed his
aunt tenderly, then suddenly asked, as he looked into her
eyes, “You don't mind my kissing you, do you? That
don't make you sick?”

“No, oh no!” she answered, and Johnnie departed on
his strange errand.

Squire Russell sat in his office or reading-room,

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pretending to look over his evening paper, but his thoughts
were really upstairs with Dora, whom he had not seen
that day, and whose illness troubled him greatly, for he
rightly associated it with his proposal of the previous
night. Squire Russell loved Dora with a great, warm,
sheltering love, which would shield her from all harm,
and unselfishly yield to her everything, but he had not
the nice, quick perception of Dr. West, and had he been
younger he could never have satisfied the wants of her
higher nature as could the rival whose existence he did
not suspect. But he loved her very much. He must
have her. He could not live without her, he thought,
and womanish man that he was, a tear was gathering in
his eyes when Johnnie entered the room abruptly, and
locking the door, came and stood beside him.

“What do you wish, my boy?” the Squire said
kindly, for he was never impatient with his children.

Johnnie hesitated, beginning to feel that his father's
love affair was a delicate matter for him to meddle with.

“Confound it,” he began at last, “I may as well spit
it out, and then let you knock me down, or lick me, or
anything you like. Father, I heard what you said to
Auntie last night, and what she said to you, and after
you was gone I took the floor and beat you all to smash.
I said she must be my mother,—she should be my mother,
and all that, and set you up, I tell you, till you'd hardly
know yourself from my description. To-night I've seen

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her again,—have just come from her room to tell you
something she bade me tell.”

Squire Russell had turned very white at first, feeling
indignant at his son for presuming to interfere, but this
feeling had disappeared now, and he listened eagerly while
Johnnie continued:

“She says its sudden; that she can't make a love in a
minute; that she must have six weeks or two months to
decide, and then she will tell you sure, and, father, you'll
wait; I know you will, and,—and,—well, I guess I'd hold
my tongue,—that is, I wouldn't keep teasing her, nor say
a word; just let her go her own gait, and above all I
wouldn't act lovin' like, for fear she'd up and vomit.
She don't mind me kissing her, because I've no beard, I
don't shave, nor carry a cane. I'm a boy, and you are a
whiskered old chap. I guess that's the difference between
us. Father, you'll wait?”

Squire Russell could not forbear a smile at his son's
novel reasoning, but he was not angry, and it made his
child seem nearer, now that both shared the same secret,
and were interested in the same cause. Yes, he would
wait two, three, or four months if Dora liked, and meantime
things should continue as usual in the household.

“And afterward, father?” Johnnie asked. “How
about that? If auntie says no, she'll mean it, and you
won't raise a rumpus, will you? You'll grin and bear it
like a man?”

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Yes, the Squire would do all his son required, and before
Dora retired for the night, a bit of paper was pushed
under her door, on which was written:

“The governor is O. K. He'll wait and so will I;
and if you must say no, he won't raise hob, but I will.
I tell you now I'll raise the very roof! Don't say no,
Auntie, don't!

It was rather embarrassing next morning at the breakfast
table, but Johnnie threw himself into the gap, talking
loudly and rapidly to his father of the war meeting to be
held that night, wishing he was a man, so he could enlist,
and predicting, as did many a foolish one at that period,
the spring of '61, that the immense force of 75,000,
called for by the President, would subjugate the South
at once.

The Squire talked very little, and never once glanced
at Dora, who in her heart blessed both Jessie and
Johnnie, the latter for engaging his father's attention and
the former for talking so constantly to herself and
Bell.

Dora was very white and nervous, but this was imputed
to her illness of the previous day, and so neither Bell nor
Jessie dreamed of what had passed between her and their

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host, or how her heart was aching with the terrible fear
of what might be in store for her.

It had been arranged that the Misses Verner should
remain at Beechwood for a long time, and as Bell thought
four weeks came under that definition she began to talk
of returning home as early as the first of June; but with
a look of terror which startled both the girls, Dora
begged of them to stay.

“Don't leave me alone!” she cried, clasping Bell's
hand pleadingly. “I shall die if you do! Oh, stay,—
you would if you knew—”

She did not say what, and Bell gazed at her wonderingly,
but decided at last to stay a few weeks longer.
Nothing could please Jessie better, for she did not particularly
like Morrisville, and she did like Beechwood
very much. She liked the lake view, the hills, and the
people, and she liked the six noisy, frolicsome children,
with their good-humored sire, who treated her much as
he would have treated a playful, teasing child not his
own, but a guest. Many were the gambols she had with
Ben and Burt, and little Daisy, who loved her almost as
much as they loved Dora, while upon the matter-of-fact
Squire she played off many a saucy trick, keeping him
constantly on the alert with plots and conspiracies, and
so making the time seem comparatively short, while he
waited for Dora's decision. But to Dora there was
nothing which brought comfort or diverted her for a

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moment from the agonizing suspense which grew more
and more dreadful as the days went swiftly by, bringing
no answer to the letter sent to Dr. West.

“Is it anything in particular you are expecting?”
Johnnie asked one day, when she turned so white and
shivered, as he returned from the post-office, with letters
for all except herself.

“Yes,—no! Oh, I don't know what I expect,” she
answered, and leaning her head on Johnnie's shoulder,
she wept silently, while the boy tried to comfort her,
and became from that moment almost as anxious that she
should have a letter as she seemed herself.

Regularly each day at mail-time he was at the office,
and if there chanced to be a letter for Dora, as there
sometimes was, running to her eagerly, but saying always
to himself as the weary, disappointed look remained the
same:

“The right one has not come.”

No, the right one had not come, and now it was more
than seven weeks since the night when Dr. West had
been written to.

Bell and Jessie were really going home at last, and
their trunks stood in the hall ready for the early morning
train. Dora had exhausted every argument for a longer
stay, but Bell felt that they must go.

“They would come again in the autumn, perhaps, or
Dora should visit them. She would need rest by that

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time, sure,” Bell said, and Dora shuddered as she thought
how she might never know rest or happiness again, save
as she found them in the discharge of what she was beginning
to believe was her imperative duty.

“Letters! letters!” shouted Johnnie, running up the
walk, his hand full of documents, one of which he was
closely inspecting. Spelling out the place where it was
mailed, he exclaimed, as he entered the room, “That's
from the doctor, for it says `San Francisco.”'

Instantly both Jessie and Dora started forward to
claim it, the hot blood dyeing the cheeks of the latter, but
subsiding instantly, and leaving only a livid hue as Jessie
took the letter, saying:

“It is for me.”

Sinking back in her chair, Dora pressed her hands
tightly together, as Jessie broke the seal and read, partly
to herself and partly aloud, that message from Dr.
West.

“Is still in San Francisco, at the hotel, which is
crowded with guests, and will compare very favorably
with the best houses in New York City. Begins to
think of coming home in the autumn. Mother's health
improved. Was pleased to get my letter,” and so on.

This was the substance of what Jessie read, until she
reached a point where she stopped suddenly, and seemed
to be considering; then turning to Johnnie, she asked
him to do for her some trifling service, which would take

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him from the room. When he was gone, she said to
Dora:

“Maybe you'll scold, but it cannot now be helped. In
my letter to Dr. West, I said, or hinted, at what everybody
is talking about,—that is, you know, about your
marrying Squire Russell, and this is the doctor's reply:
`What you wrote of Miss Freeman took me by surprise,
but it will be a grand thing for the Squire. Tell her that
if she decides to mother those six children, she has my
best wishes for her happiness. You say you had picked
her out for me. She would probably tell you differently,
as she has seemed to dislike rather than like me,
and according to your own story, bites her words off
crisp and short when I am mentioned.”'

“O Jessie, how could you? What made you tell
him that? It was cruel of you, when I do like him,”
Dora cried, her face for an instant crimsoning with passion
and then growing deathly white as she felt her destiny
crushing down upon her without a hope of escape.

“Because you do,” Jessie retorted, anxious to defend
herself. “You are just as spiteful as can be when I
tease you about him, and I don't care!”

Jessie was vexed at herself for having told Dr. West
what she had, and vexed at Dora for resenting it; but
she never dreamed of the terrible pain throbbing in
Dora's heart, as with a mighty effort she forced back the

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piteous, despairing cry rising to her lips, and brought
there a smile instead, saying pleasantly:

“Well, never mind it now. It does not matter; only
Dr. West has been so kind to us in sickness that I ought
to like him, and do. Does he say what time he will be
home?”

Jessie was thoroughly deceived, and after ascertaining
that he merely spoke of coming in the autumn, went to
her room, as there were a few things she must yet do for
her morrow's journey.