“Clubs, your sister Milly, as you call her, is very beautiful, with eyes like stars and hair the color of the chestnuts I used to gather in the Mayfield woods. If I were you, I should be proud to call her sister.” And Oliver was proud; but when the handsome, manly figure of Lawrence Thornton had vanished through the door, he fancied he breathed more freely, though why he should do so he could not tell, for he liked to hear Mildred praised. “I shall see her for myself during this vacation,” he thought; and after his return to Beechwood he was nearly as impatient as the Judge for her arrival. “She will be home to-day,” he thought on the morning when he knew she was expected, and the sunlight dancing on the wall seemed all the brighter to him. He had hoped to meet her at Beechwood, but his enemy, the headache, came on in time to prevent his doing so, and with a sigh of disappointment he went to his little room, and leaning back in his easy-chair, counted the lagging moments until he heard the well-known step upon the stairs, and knew that _she_ had come. In a moment she stood beside him, and was looking into his white, worn face, just as he was gazing at her in all her glowing, healthy beauty. He had kissed her heretofore when they met,—kissed her when they parted; but he dared not do it now, for she seemed greatly changed. He had lost his little, romping, spirited Milly, and he knew there was a dividing line between himself and the grown young lady standing before him. But no such thoughts intruded themselves upon Mildred; Oliver, to her, was the same good-natured boy who had waded barefoot with her in the brook, picked “huckleberries” on the hills and chestnuts in the wood. She never once thought of him as a _man_, and just as she was wont to do of old, just so she did now,—she wound her arms around his neck, and kissing his forehead, where the blue veins were swelling, she told him how glad she was to be there with him again,—told him how sorry she was to find him so feeble and thin, and lastly, how proud she was when she heard from Lawrence Thornton that he was first in his class, and bade fair to make the great man she long ago predicted he would make. Then she paused for his reply, half expecting that he would compliment her in return, for Mildred was well used to flattery, and rather claimed it as her due. Oliver read as much in her speaking eyes, and when, laying her hat upon the floor, she sat down upon a stool at his feet, he laid his hand fondly on her hair, and said: “You are very, very beautiful, Milly!” “Oh, Oliver!” and the soft, brown eyes looked up at him wistfully,—“you never yet told me a lie; and now, as true as you live, do you think I am handsome,—as handsome, say, as Lilian Veille?” “You must remember I have never seen Miss Veille,” said Oliver, “and I cannot judge between you. Mr. Thornton showed me her photograph, when he was in Amherst; but it was a poor one, and gave no definite idea of her looks.”