“‘Oh, Cousin Cora,’ she said, ‘I have been dying to tell some one and you will be just the one to understand. It is the most exciting thing! Poor Cousin Robert isn’t a bit like us and he has a dreadful time with Mamma. He hasn’t been brought up in our way, but lives in New York in such a worldly family, and he doesn’t think anything of dancing and the theater, and he even plays cards. He seems very nice, though, and as long as that is the way he was taught I don’t know that he is to blame. But Mamma preaches at him all the time and he escapes whenever he can politely, because he is always considerate, even when Mamma is the worst. He has been lovely to me and I told him all about Clifford and he is going to help us. Well, he told me his troubles, too. A lot of his college friends came through here the other day and he couldn’t invite them to the house, because he knew Mamma wouldn’t approve of them, so he gave a little lunch down town somewhere and invited them to go to some play. He ’phoned for the tickets early in the morning and they were to come here, but they didn’t come, so he said he would get them at the theater. Well, Cora, he got home just in time for dinner and was so excited, and afterwards he took me into the library and told me all about it. There was some mistake about the tickets for they had been used already and the people were in the box—,’ Mabel, it would sound awfully silly for me to tell you all she said he said.” “Go on,” said Mabel, sternly; “I must hear all.”