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reputation for silence and unsociability. Those who observed him noted that he frequently smiled to himself, and shook their heads ominously. Toward the end of the cruise it was seen that his face had taken on the seriousness of a great resolution, and it was evident that his mind had been made up finally on some matter of the gravest importance.

When Betty saw him coming up the garden path after his return she was smitten with sudden confusion, but she managed to greet him with proper dignity. After the usual exchange of compliments and a few inquiries on her part regarding the cruise the conversation became monosyllabic. As usual on

Being of a poetic temperament, how could she refuse a proposal so poetic? When the matter was settled, with pretty formalities too sacred for the eyes of outsiders, she looked up at him and exclaimed, "Wouldn't you like to see the other plant? It turns out to have been very significant."

"It doesn't bear orange blossoms, does it?"

"Not exactly, but it bears something almost as appropriate."

"Well, it will be the favorite plant in our garden some day. In fact, I think I'll have a whole garden full of it."

"I have found how it got here," she explained as they passed through the

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HOMESTEAD, PA.-THE FIRST CARNEGIE LIBRARY, BUILT FOR THE USE OF THE HOMESTEAD EMPLOYEES. Now used as an office for the Steel Company.-Van P. Ault, Phot.

such occasions she reverted to the bulb to start it again.

"I have taken good care of our bulb since you left. It has blossomed at last."

"I have also watched the growth of something you planted, and it has also blossomed." he said like one who had carefully rehearsed a part.

"That I planted? I don't understand. And she looked at him with wide-eyed wonder. She observed, however, that he looked very athletic and that a tanned complexion became him.

"Y-yes. I have watched what you planted, and it has blossomed into love. I have come to ask if you will care for that flower in my heart forever."

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MANSION OF MR. CAREY, PRES. OF THE STEEL TRUST, HOMESTEAD, PA.-Van P. Ault. Phot.

plenty of them, a flat white ribbon of roadway and a bit of a postoffice, roughly shingled, in the midst of the nearest clump of pines. He stepped into the postoffice as the central spot of civilization. Some one was stamping letters behind the glass inclosure, a girl with smooth dark hair. Beatrice had smooth dark hair.

He watched the girl stamping letters with interest and wondered why some one did not tell her to wear her smooth dark hair in two soft braids around her head, crown fashion, as Beatrice did.

"Where do the Vaughans live, please?" he asked finally, when the stamping ceased.

ribboned roadway and wondered whether he would find her like the girls Gerald had always admired. A lithesome, limp, blessed damozel type, with close silky gowns and loose floppy hair. Last summer she had not been that type. He thought of the trim girl figure holding the rudder of the Water Lily that last day. She had been more than the sort of girl to fall in love with. She had been a good fellow, a stanch friend. And as he watched her he had stopped rowing, and they had drifted slowly in the sunset glow that flooded the lake while he told her.

There had been no actual engagement. He had nothing to reproach her with.

He had not been in a position to ask her to be his wife then, but he had thought a girl like Beatrice had meant more by a kiss, a hand clasp, a few vague words of understanding, than other girls. He had

thought she might wait until next summer. And now, in April, he had returned to New York to learn that Gerald was in disgrace, had married on nothing, eloped to Pineville-by-the-sea, N. C., and his wife was Beatrice Stafford.

Gerald's mother had said they were penniless. Gerald's father had remarked that he didn't give a rap. They could exist upon love and art.

More or less for Beatrice's sake and a little for Gerald's, Gerald's brother had taken it upon himself to visit the bridal

He had not expected to see her face to face so soon or alone. Neither had he expected her to act as she did. The color rose in her cheeks, tipping even her ears with pink. It was an old habit. He remembered it.

"I thought you were in London," she said.

"You don't give a fellow a very decent welcome after he's traveled from London to this wilderness to say congratulations."

He stepped into the hall after her. She hesitated and laughed, looking at her floured hands.

"I can't shake hands with you, andthe biscuits are in the oven. I shall have to watch them. Do you mind coming out to the kitchen?"

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Not so pretentious a residence as the steel king's mansion, but has the distinguishing feature of a home where peace and happiness dwell.-C. A. Cline, Phot. couple and help Gerald. Smothering his own love, he had made up his mind that as long as Beatrice had married a Vaughan she should not suffer from it.

There was no bell at the door of the little brown house with the funny roof. It was merely a bungalow in weathered shingles, and he pounded on the door lustily until it opened and Beatrice stood before him.

She was not the blessed damozel type yet. Her smooth dark hair was wound about her head in just the same crown fashion, and she wore a short dark blue linen skirt and a white shirt waist. The sleeves were rolled to her elbows, and from her finger tips to elbow dimples here was flour sprinkled.

He didn't mind. There appeared to be only three rooms-the studio-sitting room, the dining-room and the kitchen. Collapsible ready-in-a-minute studio divans were in the sitting-room and dining-room in lieu of bedrooms. It was all charmingly, most uncomfortably odd, bizarre and bohemian.

"Where's Gerald?" he asked when he had found a chair in the kitchen.

Beatrice knelt beside the stove to look at the biscuit He could not see her face. "He went to the postoffice for the last mail. You must have missed him." "Well, what ever made him come to this lost corner?"

"Oh, because it was the chance of something definite, you know! Don't you

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know? she added quickly, seeing the puzzled look on his face. "Well, Gerald's chum, Netherby Ames, broke all to pieces last fall from overwork and so on, and he was ordered down here. And he couldn't afford to come and stay indefinitely, so he pulled a few wires, and things happened. He was made postmaster here at Pineville. And he got lonesome and healthy and workful again a month ago, so Gerald's in his place, and he's in New York. Don't you see it? It was really very definite and businesslike and right under the circumstances."

"Oh, certainly, under the circumstances," agreed Broderick. "So old Gerry's postmaster instead of artist."

"Both," she corrected. "He has lots of time to study, and it's good for him-the responsibility, I mean. You wouldn't know him."

"I suppose not," assented Broderick uneasily. He tried to reconcile his little circle of the universe, to make the chaotic jumble fall into place and harmonize. Gerald, Gerald the helpless, erratic, fantastic, irrational, joyous hearted, penniless, artist, a person of matrimonial responsibility, a postmaster. But then he remembered the young smooth-haired person stamping letters. Of course Gerald had found his usual way out of the difficulty. He had hired some Pineville lass to do the heavy work, and he drew the salary. It was like Gerald. But there was Beatrice, Beatrice making biscuit. He looked at her with troubled eyes, seeing endless vistas of Beatrice making biscuits throughout the years.

"Don't you miss New York?"

"Oh, so much!" she said. "I'll never be happy until I get back."

"Have you given up your own work?" "Only for the time being. I shall take it up again, of course. I shall have to."

Broderick's hands tightened in a sudden grip. So she was to work again, turn out her endless succession of little wash illustrations for second rate monthly magazines. Gerald would not mind, would not see the point. He would think he was being broadminded and bohemian to let his wife carry on her own art irrespective of him. But Beatrice saw the point.

He rose from his chair suddenly, his face white with the anger and love he had smothered. Before he could stop himself the words came leaping to his lips:

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"Marry Gerald! I?" Someone was coming along the white roadway. From the kitchen window two figures could be seen, and she pointed to them. "There is Gerald, and that is his wife, my sister Barbara. I am merely attendant star to the honeymoon. They brought me along to-well, to make the biscuit."

A minute later and Broderick met the bridal couple on the wide veranda under the funny roof. The bride was the girl with the smooth dark hair who had been stamping letters, and she laughed at him.

"I knew who you were, but I wanted Gerald all to myself, and I knew Beatrice would take care of you."

"She did," answered Broderick happily, and as the rest went into the house he paused to brush off traces of flour from his coat collar. But Beatrice burned the biscuit.

A March Mistake.

BY JEANNE O. LOIZEAUX. Copyright, 1906, by M. M. Cunningham. "Elsie, John Fielding is waiting for you downstairs."

Elsie looked up to see her mother in the door and dropped the warm cloak she was about to put on. She was a quiet, gentle girl, so unassuming that her dark prettiness was more unnoticed than it deserved to be. It had been long since John had come to see her in the old friendly fashion of the time before Rose Lisle moved to their town. The girl gave another touch to her smooth hair. Her mother stood watching her and then remarked:

"Mrs. Dent told me today that John and Rose have been out for over a month. He has just come home. If a quarrel with Rose is all that sends him to you, I should think that"-Elsie wheeled impatiently.

"Mother, John and I have always been good friends, and I shall not question any motive that brings him to see me. I shall always be the same to him. You can't expect a man so deeply in love as he is with Rose to be regular in his attention to his girl friends. And no one could help loving a beauty like Rose. She's good, too.'

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Elsie greeted John as if she had seen him yesterday and soothed his evidently overwrought mood with a gentle, half laughing tact. He was tall and blond, with fine blue eyes which tonight were clouded, and his face was a little careworn. Sometimes he gave random answers as if he had not heard what she said. After a half uneasy hour of the March twilight he turned to her in awkward masculine gratitude for her patience with him.

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