THE mountain had a little trick of hiding itself for two or three days together behind an impenetrable curtain of mist, and then appearing again suddenly with an artless air of having been just freshly created, and presented for the first time, a vast and splendid purple bulk against the sky, to the eyes of an astonished and admiring world.

It might have spared itself the pains, on this occasion, as far as Buckhout's was concerned; for all the boarders who were not taking their afternoon naps were out on the piazza at the other end of the house, where no mountain was to be seen, mist or no mist.

Johanna herself was not there. She had gone, still weeping, to finish some of her belated tasks. But her affairs were being discussed with as lively an interest as ever. It is not often that the quiet summer days at Buckhout's are broken by such an excitement as a theft in the house! And when a waitresssuch a kind, good, faithful waitress, too, as

Johanna-has her purse stolen by the cook,or perhaps I should say, the laundress,-but indeed, this was the very question that was agitating the back piazza while the mountain wasted its splendors upon the front. The season was nearing an end, and the cook and the laundress had both gone away by the morning train, before Johanna's loss had been discovered.

"The cook was fat and red," said Alec. "I think it was the cook."

"The laundress was lean and snappy," said Gladys. "I think it was the laundress." "The cook roomed with Johanna," said Bell, "and had the best chance to find out where she kept her money."

"The laundress did n't like Johanna," said Bab, "and had the most reason for stealing it. As if anyone could help liking Johanna!" she added, indignantly. "The kindest, willingest thing,-is n't she, Rose?"

They both looked up, Rosalind from the step

where she was sitting, with the sunshine glinting on her bright hair, and Rosamond from the railing of the porch, where she leaned, a slim white figure, in the shadow. But Rosamond spoke first.

"I think it was the cook," she said, with decision. And Rosalind felt an instant and unalterable conviction that it was the laundress. She said so, softly, to Bell, and the Dusenberry boy heard her, and wrinkled up his eyes in the funny way he had of doing when he was amused.

Rosalind looked at him severely.

"Tommy John never liked the laundress," she observed, dropping her voice with the discretion of an elder sister.

"And after all," said Gladys, wiping her eyes, "it does n't so much matter which one of them took it. The principal thing is that the poor girl has lost her money. She kept it between the mattresses of her bed, in a steel purse that she was very fond of, and that shut with such a tight clasp that she could hardly open it herself. The thief just took purse and all! "

"Depraved creature!" shuddered Alec. "I'm glad she's gone away. Who knows?— the next thing might have been poison in the gravy!"

"Or Paris green in the starch," murmured the Dusenberry boy, softly.

Gladys turned grieved eyes upon her brother. "You ought n't to make fun, Alec,” she said. "If we could only help Johanna, someway! A benefit entertainment,-O, that would be fun, would n't it, Rose!"

Again they both looked up, but this time it was Rosalind who spoke, with the flush of delicate color in her fair cheek that made the people at Buckhout's call her the White Rose, while dark-eyed Rosamond was the Red.

"I think a benefit would be lovely," she said. And Rosamond immediately resolved that she would oppose a benefit, if need be, with her last breath.

"That would be exciting!" she observed, with fine disdain. "So novel! vocal duets by Bab and Bell, piano solos by-"

"I have n't said that I intended to play, I believe," said Rosalind with her chin in the air.

Before these impressive and beautiful verses were finished, the two Roses had, as usual, disappeared.

The Dusenberry boy was always making up verses about something, and teaching them to the others. It was he who first casually introduced those allusions to "The Wars of the Roses," which were now familiar to everybody at Buckhout's. There was war between the Roses, of course,-there had never been anything else, since they had first met there in June.

There were plenty of reasons, as either of the Roses could have told you, if they had not been too proud to complain. Rosalind had never said anything about it, of course, to anyone, but ever since the day when Rosamond had slipped out a page of music from

the piece which she was to play at the musicale that evening, and so spoiled her performance completely, she had felt with bitterness that things could never be any different between them. She could never trust a girl who would stoop to such a spiteful act. And as for Rosamond, she had known quite as positively that they never could be friends ever since the day when she discovered that the White Rose had been prattling to the household about a private affair which had come to her knowledge accidentally, and which she had been specially asked not to mention. As Rosamond, leaving the group on the porch still singing, strolled around and went into the house by the side door, Rosalind came in at the front. Thus, most unfortunately, they met at the foot of the stairs; and there, also most unfortunately, they came upon Johanna who, in the act of carrying a water-pitcher to the diningroom, had been overwhelmed by a fresh sense of her affliction, and collapsed, water-pitcher and all, bathed in tears, upon the lowest step. "Don't cry, Johanna!" said Rosalind, with sympathy, loftily ignoring Rosamond's pres

ence.

Johanna choked frightfully.

"Me money, Miss,-me little all!" she gasped, between her sobs. "An' her so smilin' an' so pleasant to me face, an' robbin' me of ivery cint behint me back! O worra, worra!" "It's a shame!" said Rosalind, patting her fervently on the arm. "But she was too thin, Johanna, she was indeed! I used to think so when she brought up the clothes. Always remember, won't you, Johanna, not to trust people that are thin and queer like that!"

"You can't be too careful, Johanna," urged Rosamond, patting her other arm, and sublimely oblivious to Rosalind's remarks; "you can't be too careful about anybody that shares your room. She was fat, of course, and she seemed good-natured; but you must never forget, will you, Johanna, that you can't judge of people by the way they look!"

Johanna's mind, never very strong, -nobody indeed had ever said or even thought that poor Johanna had a strong mind-threatened by this time to give way completely under the strain of her bewilderment.

"Yes 'm-no 'm!" she gurgled, looking from one to the other, and rocked wildly between them on the billows of her woe. "An' me money, Miss,-me little- "

This was too much. The Roses stood up simultaneously, regarding each other with glances of haughty and indignant reproach. How could consolation be administered to the afflicted in such circumstances as these! What wonder that their efforts were of no avail! When, surprised at the sudden silence about her, Johanna opened a distracted eye upon the scene, her comforters had disappeared, Rosamond mounting the stairs to her own room, and Rosalind going over to the tiny, two-storied cottage just across the road, where she and her mother and Tommy John and his nurse had their rooms.

Before she reached the cottage door, however, the voice of Tommy John came shrilling down the wind.

"Ros-y! Ros-y!" it shrieked. me-I'm comin'!"

"Wait for

Coming he certainly was. There was no doubt about that. And uncertain whether it would be in the character of an Elevated Railroad train, a tribe of Indians, or a tiger of the jungle, Rosalind stood fast and waited. But Tommy John, speeding at a terrific rate down the road, and casting himself, tripped up by a stone, bodily at his sister's feet, had for the moment forgotten even the most pleasing of his many rôles.

"It's a naukshun!" he cried vehemently, not stopping to pick himself up. "It is-it is! They said so! It's a naukshun to-night, 'n I'm goin' to have a packidge, too!"

"An auction," laughed Gladys, coming up, breathless, behind him. "We are, truly, going to have one to-night for Johanna. The Dusenberry boy proposed it, and he's going to be the auctioneer. Everybody ties up a package,—some little treasure you happen to have with you, or things that you can buy at the Post-office-and they 're sold to the highest bidder. Won't it be fun?"

"I'm goin' to have a packidge!" asserted Tommy John, proudly.

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"O no, dear!" Rosalind smiled down upon him. "You can't-"

"I can so!" said Tommy John, winking rapidly. "You look-a-here, Rosy Armstrong, -I got a treasure, 'n I'm goin' to have a packidge-yes, sir! I'm goin'-"

"Do let him, Rose," begged sympathetic Gladys.

Rosalind turned a tragic eye upon her. "You don't know!" she said. "It will be some grubby thing that he's got buried in the hole under the apple-tree,-that's where he keeps his treasures

and I should be mortified to death! Be good, won't you, Tommy John dear, and don't cry-!"

Tommy John dear did not cry. There were other and more lurid possibilities seething in his inventive brain. He swallowed hard several times, digesting, as it were, his thought.

"I'm goin'," he said slowly, and in a tone of deep conviction, "I'm goin' to be a blizzard!"

"O no, Tommy John!" cried Rosalind, dismayed. "Don't say that!"

"A nawful one,"

reflected Tommy John, deeply. "I got to. 'F I can't be a naukshun 'n have a packidge, I got to be a blizzard. Yes, sir, truly!" They looked each other squarely in the face. Beneath the pensive and guileless innocence of Tommy John's countenance, Rosalind read his invincible resolve,- and yielded.

"But don't blame me, Gladys, " she sighed, "whatever happens! He's got a dead bat, I know positively, for one thing."

Tommy John, swaggering near with as lordly an air of triumph as was possible to three feet of grimy white Russian suit and a round silken head on top of it, beamed graciously at the