Mr. Dugald threw his arm about her shoulder. "Sid, I asked your sister to marry me. You see I found out that you needed a big brother, someone with a stern eye and a hard heart and I rather want the job. And that's the only way I can think of. And she says she cannot, that she must keep the little household together in return for what the League has done and cook and sew and sweep and keep accounts. I think there was a lot more--" Sidney threw out an imploring hand to her sister. "Oh, Trude, _please_! I _do_ need a big brother. And Mr. Dugald's grand! And rich. Pola said so. And _dear_. And it'd be such fun having him in the family! I'll go away to school and Vick can work and we can give the old house over to the League. Issy _said_ they couldn't buy us! And--why, there are just loads of women trying to get Mr. Dugald--" "Sidney Romley, _stop_!" Trude stamped her foot in confused exasperation. She refused to meet Dugald's yearning eyes. "No League can mortgage your heart or your happiness!" he pleaded softly. "It belongs to you--to give--" "I object to being courted in this--public--manner," Trude broke in, her hands flying to her face. But Dugald Allan caught the surrender in her eyes. He seized her hand. "All right. We'll go out in the garden. Excuse us, Sid. When I come back I think I'll be your big brother." Sidney's eyes followed them longingly until they disappeared behind a hedge of hollyhocks. She wanted to laugh and to cry all at once she was so strangely happy; her girl heart stirred with a vicarious thrill to the look she had seen in Trude's face. Well, Trude would laugh last! Dear old Trude. Trude a bride when everyone had thought that she would never marry, just because she had no beaus like Vick or languishing poets like Issy. Sidney stood still in the center of the dusk gray room. She did not know what she wanted to do next--or even think of. She would like to plan the wedding at once with herself as a beautiful bridesmaid in shimmery white and Mart and Pola and Lavender and Aunt Achsa there to see, and she would like just to think of Mrs. Milliken's face when she heard about everything and-- Suddenly her eyes fell upon Vick's forgotten letter. What had Vick written? No ordinary letter could come on this momentous day! Perhaps Vick had written that she had eloped--she had read that sometimes even nice girls did that, girls oppressed by things like the League. She opened the letter without any hesitation and carried it to the door that she might read it by the fading light. It was not neatly margined like Issy's; the big letters raced slantwise across the page. Nor was it wordy, rather straight to the point.