Betty shuddered. "The white race is not devoid of laziness. If you want a reason for yours, just remember that the Southern sun has prevented many a man from becoming great. Keep your mind as far away from the other thing as possible." "Oh, I think I'll forget it. I felt that way yesterday. But perhaps I'd better not," she added anxiously, as her glance fell on the hymn-book. "No cross, no crown." "You will find crosses enough as you go through life," said Betty, dryly. She rose to go, and Harriet rose also and drew herself up to her full height. For the moment she looked again the tragic figure of the first day of their acquaintance. "You must have seen by this time how ignorant I am," she said mournfully. "Poor old uncle gave me all the schooling he had himself, but I knew even then it wasn't what they have nowadays. And I've had so few books to read. Once I found a five-dollar bill, and as he wouldn't take it--the most I could do--I tramped all the way to the nearest town and back, twenty miles, and bought a big basket full of cheap reprints of English standard novels. Those and the few old Latin books and the Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress are about all I've ever read. I felt like writing you that when I read his letter, and also telling you that I was afraid you wouldn't find me a lady in your sense of the word--" "You are my sister," interrupted Betty; "of course you are a lady. Dismiss any other idea from your mind. And in a year you will know so much that I shall be afraid of you. I have neglected my books for several years." "You are mighty good, and I'll humbly take all the advice you'll give me." Betty went back to her room and sought the warm nest she had left. "She makes me feel old," she thought. "Am I to be responsible for the development of her character? I can't send her off to Europe yet. There's nothing to do but keep her for at least a year, until she knows something of the world and feels at home in it. Meanwhile I suppose I must be her guide and philosopher! I believe that my acquaintance with Senator North has made me feel like a child. He is so much wiser in a minute than I could be in a lifetime; and as I have made him the pivot on which the world revolves, no wonder I feel small by contrast. "But after all, I am twenty-seven, and what is more, I have seen a good deal of men," she added abruptly. And in a moment she admitted that she had allowed her heart, full of the youth of unrealities and dreams, to act independently of her more mature intelligence. "And that is the reason I have been so happy," she mused. "There is a facer for the intelligence. As long as I have exercised it I have never felt as if I were walking on air and song."