brood of the merest flakes of roses, which held the hot crimson of so many summers gone that they could laugh in the teeth of the winter outside, and did do it, until it seemed like a perfect sham and a jest. The wood-fire was clear, just now, when Dode came in; the little room was fairly alive, palpitated crimson; in the dark corners, under the tables and chairs, the shadows tried not to be black, and glowed into a soft maroon; even the pale walls flushed, cordial and friendly. Dode was glad of it; she hated dead, ungrateful colors: grays and browns belonged to thin, stingy duty-lives, to people who are patient under life, as a perpetual imposition, and, as Bone says, "gets into heben by the skin o' their teeth." Dode's color was dark blue: you know that means in an earthly life stern truth, and a tenderness as true: she wore it to-night, as she generally did, to tell God she was alive, and thanked Him for being alive. Surely the girl was made for to-day; she never missed the work or joy of a moment here in dreaming of a yet ungiven life, as sham, lazy women do. You would think that, if you had seen her standing there in the still light, motionless, yet with latent life in every limb. There was not a dead atom in her body: something within, awake, immortal, waited, eager to speak every moment in the coming color on her cheek, the quiver of her lip, the flashing words or languor of her eye. Her auburn hair, even, at times, lightened and darkened. She stood, now, leaning her head on the window, waiting. Was she keeping, like the fire-glow, a still, warm welcome for somebody? It was a very homely work she had been about, you will think. She had made a panful of white cream-crackers, and piled them on a gold-rimmed China plate, (the only one she had,) and brought down from the cupboard a bottle of her raspberry-cordial. Douglas Palmer and George used to like those cakes better than anything else she made: she remembered, when they were starting out to hunt, how Geordy would put his curly head over the gate and call out, "Sis! are you in a good-humor? Have some of your famous cakes for supper, that's a good girl!" Douglas Palmer was coming to-night, and she had baked them, as usual,--stopping to cry now and then, thinking of George. She could not help it, when she was alone. Her father never knew it. She had to be cheerful for herself and him too, when he was there.