“Nothing probably would have come of it. I imagine the _Pequot_, as you call her, was not more than fourteen, and you know how easily we forget the fancies of that age. She was undoubtedly pleased with the evident admiration of your handsome brother, and watched anxiously it may be, for the evenings when, with others of his comrades, he came to the hotel; but a closer acquaintance would have resulted in her knowing the deception about the name, and after that she would not have cared for him. If he really liked her he would not have imposed upon her thus. She’s forgotten him ere this, and is probably a married woman.” “Perhaps so,” Rose replied; “I wish I knew. Jimmie didn’t mean to deceive her long. He took the name Dick Lee, partly in sport, and partly because he didn’t wish his teacher to know how often Jim Carleton was at the Pequot House, when he thought him somewhere else. After he began to like her, and saw how pure and good and truthful she was, he hated to tell her, but had made up his mind to do so when mother took him away.” “He might have written,” Annie said, “and she may have been silly enough to cry over his abrupt and unexplained departure.” “Mother wouldn’t let him write,” Rose rejoined, laughingly. “She watched him closely, and got Tom interested too. Poor Jimmie, I wonder if that girl ever thinks of him now?” “She may, but I dare say she is glad your mother took him home. She has outlived all that fancy,” and Annie’s white fingers, on one of which the wedding ring was shining, worked nervously together. As if bent on tormenting both her auditors by talking of Jimmie, Rose kept on, wondering how he looked, if she should know him, what he would say, how he would act, and if he ever would come. “I’m so glad you are here, Annie,” she said, “for you do everybody good you come in contact with, and I want you to talk to Jimmie, will you?” Annie only smiled, but her cheeks burned with excitement, and Rose was about asking if her head didn’t ache, when a letter was brought in bearing the Washington postmark. Eagerly Rose broke it open, screaming with joy as she read that Jimmie had been released,—had taken the oath of allegiance, and was coming home to Rockland. “He’ll be here,—let me see,—Thursday, on the three o’clock train. That’s to-morrow. Oh, I’m so glad!” and in her delight the little lady forgot that for the last week she had been playing _sick_, and leaping upon the carpet, danced about the room, kissing alternately her mother and Annie, and asking if they were ever so pleased in their lives.