Fairly seated in the East-bound express, shawl-strap and hand-satchel tucked away behind their proper lattice, herself by no means tucked into the corner, but spread out as luxuriously as a young lady of eighteen or so knows how to arrange, Elsie Burton had leisure to draw a long breath of satisfaction and look about her. The last few days had been so full of the bustle of preparation, combined with the closing hours of school, that she had had little leisure for anything. Now for the long-promised holiday week at Uncle Leonard's. Elsie Burton had few fittings from the home nest to remember. Indeed I may say that she was one of those fortunate young ladies who had never, until that time, been on the cars without either mother or father. A sweet, sheltered, happy life she had led, and a sweet, bright girl was she. Occasionally a little restless flutter had shown the mother-bird that her nestling longed to try her wings alone; hence this visit, promised and planned. And Elsie, curled comfortably in her seat, with the seat before her turned to receive her lunch basket and any stray apples or papers that she might purchase, felt that she was a little school girl no longer, but in the last half-hour had blossomed into a young lady. "Take care of yourself, daughter," had been her father's last tenderly spoken message, a little anxious look about the eyes telling her that this business of trying one's wings was not so pleasant for the old birds as for those who wire experimenting; Dr. Falconer had added, with a meaning smile, "And remember the hands." This latter message lingered with her. She meant to take care of herself, to be so wise and prudent that both father and mother would be delighted with her. And of course she meant to take care of her hands! But the hint half-vexed her; she did not understand it, and felt for the little book which she had dropped into her pocket but a few minutes before. What a tiny book it was! Paper-covered too, but daintily illuminated; looking, indeed, as though it had been gotten up for choice moments. "I wonder," said our young lady to herself, "if this bit of a volume can be a dissertation on the care of hands?" She laughed a little as she said it, and stopped to fasten the fourth button of her dark, neat, exquisitely-fitting kid gloves; her hands certainly looked well in them. She could not endure ill-shaped gloves, and as for wearing ripped ones, she never did it; nor, truth to tell, did she like to wear mended ones. It would have been a pleasure to her, on the discovery of the first rip, to have consigned the offending gloves to the waste bag, but this was by no means the teaching of her mother; so the shapely hands were sometimes marred—in the estimation of their owner—by mended gloves, albeit the mending was very neat. Dr. Falconer could hardly have meant that. Now she began to look for the marked passages. Marked passages? Why, the little book was full of them!