"Legislative honors have turned his head, have they?" smiled Gertrude, intent on her own thoughts in another direction. She was not, therefore, prepared for the sudden fling of temper in the strange girl beside her. "Yes, it has; 'n if it don't turn some other way before long, I'll break his neck for him. _I_ ain't marryin' a widower if I do like Ettie." In spite of herself, Gertrude started a little. She looked at Francis quite steadily for a moment, and then said: "Could you and Ettie come to my house and spend the day next Sunday? I'm glad you told me of Ettie's--of--about the change in her manner toward you." "Don't let on that I told you anything," said Francis, as they parted. Since they had been in the store they had not gone regularly to the weekly evening Guild meetings, and Gertrude had seen less of them. She was surprised, however, on the following Sunday, to see the strange, mysterious change in Ettie. A part of her frank, open, childish manner was gone, and yet nothing more mature had taken its place. There would be flashes of her usual manner, but long silences, quite foreign to the child, would follow. At the dinner table she grew deadly ill, and had to be taken up stairs. Gertrude tucked a soft cover about her on the couch in her own room, and gave her smelling salts and a trifle of wine. The child drank the wine but began to cry. "Oh, don't cry, Ettie," said Gertrude, stroking her hair gently. "You'll be over it in a little while. I think our dining-room is much warmer than yours, and it was very hot to-day. Then your trying to eat the olives when you don't like them, might easily make you sick. You'll be all right after a little I'm sure. Don't cry." "That's the same kind of wine I had that day at Coney Island," she said, and Gertrude thought how irrelevant the remark was, and how purely of physical origin were the tears of such a child. "Would you like a little more?" asked Gertrude, smiling. Ettie shivered, and closed her eyes. "No; I don't like it. I guess it ain't polite to say so, but--Oh, of course _maybe_ I'd like it if I was well, but it made me sick that time, an' so I don't like it now when I _am_ sick." She laughed in a childish way, and then she drew Gertrude's face down near her own. "Say, I'll tell you the solemn truth. It made me tight that day. He told me so afterwards, n' I guess it did." Here was a revelation, indeed. Gertrude stroked the fluffy hair, gently. She was trying to think of just the right thing to say. It was growing dark in the room. Ettie reached up again and drew Gertrude's face down. "Say," she whispered, "you won't be mad at me for that, will you? He told me I wasn't to blab to anybody; but it always seems as if you wouldn't be mad at me, and"--she began to weep again.