"Oh, do go lower, Monica!" she pleaded; but the wayward girl only laughed. Even Olive tried to dissuade her from going so recklessly high, but Monica showed no sign of lessening her speed, and would doubtless have eventually overbalanced herself, had not little Joan run out to say that her mother was ready to see Monica now. With a merry laugh the girl slowed down, and finally dropped from the seat and catching hold of Olive, said mischievously: "Were you afraid you would have to pick up a bundle of broken bones? I am sure Dr. Franklyn would have liked mending them up again!" "Oh, don’t, Monica!" was all Olive said, but her silence and Elsa’s still scared-looking face, made Monica realise that she had gone a little too far, and she felt somewhat subdued as they retraced their steps to the house. Kathleen came out of her mother’s room as the girls tapped at the door. "Mother is very anxious to see your friend, Olive," she said, with a bright little smile; "she is feeling fairly well to-day." Monica was seized with a sudden fit of intense shyness, and would gladly have escaped the ordeal, but Olive, never dreaming that her haughty young friend was troubled with any such thing as nervousness, pushed her forward as the door closed after Kathleen’s retreating figure, saying: "This is Monica Beauchamp, mother." And Monica looking straight before her, saw a pale, gentle face, with large luminous eyes, and heard a sweet, soft voice murmuring words of welcome, while the thin white hands clasped her strong young ones, and drew her proud young head down low enough for the invalid to print a loving motherly kiss upon the frank, open brow. "You do not mind, dear?" said Mrs. Franklyn gently, as she scanned the face of Olive’s new friend with eager intensity. "If you are Olive’s friend, you must be mine, too." And Monica murmured something to the effect that she would like to be. A few minutes were spent in pleasant chatter, about the school, and one thing and another, and Mrs. Franklyn, reading between the lines, got a very good insight into the character of Olive’s friend. "A girl with wonderful possibilities before her," she thought to herself, "but----" The unfinished sentence ended in a sigh, for she was thinking of this stranger’s influence over her little girl. Meanwhile Olive was showing the photographs of all the brothers and sisters, which made quite a picture gallery of the mantelpiece; but remembering yet another of her two brothers, taken together, which was in the drawing-room, she ran off to get it, saying: "Monica must see that one, mother; take care of each other until I come back." The door had no sooner closed after Olive than Mrs. Franklyn, turning to the girl who was sitting beside her couch, said, in the tenderest of tones, "My child, are you a Christian?"