few feet between the ceiling and the floor on that side were broken by two half windows, their tiny panes contriving to let in a little of the southern sunshine and breeze, and a glimpse of the apple-trees beyond. It really was a most lovable and harmonious room, and its quaintness seemed the proper setting for Cousin Peace's sweet aloofness from the world of to-day. Rob came alone to begin dismantling the room of its mementos of the time when she had been the Scheherazade of Fayre, and had told stories to the children for money which the Grey family had then so sorely needed. These mementos were the absurdities which Battalion B had showered upon her. The mottoes which Bartlemy had illuminated still adorned the walls; Rob smiled and then sighed as she took them down, one after the other--"Young Robin Grey came a-Courtin' We," "Plain Tales for the Bills," and other ridiculous sentiments which the boys had contributed for her to hang in her auditorium, so they declared, but which had hung here all this time, here where Rob used to come to prepare her stories. Battalion B's other contributions to her enterprise were also piled on the chairs and in the corners of this room--rattan rods, slates, primers, a pedagogue's cap, and an impossible false front of yellow flax, with its wide cotton parting; this Bruce had sent her. Rob laid her treasures in the clothes-basket, amusement and regret written on her face. She was still young--just over the line, childhood not out of sight behind her, but its very nearness made it worse to know that it was inaccessible. Those had been hard days, but they had been pleasant ones, and sixteen was a delightful age! Eighteen's two additional years made great differences. Rob folded the false front down its parting and smoothed its flaxen locks meditatively. No shadow had come over the jolly comradeship that had been established between her and Bruce at their first meeting; he was still her boy friend, treating her with that fine mixture of consideration, perfect understanding and equality which is the ideal of American boy and girl friendship. But Rob felt quite sure that Bruce's chummy manner hid quite as much of another sort of affection for her as Basil quietly, but frankly showed for Wythie, and which Wythie accepted with her sweet, honest single-mindedness. Rob had no desire to exchange her most precious comradeship for love, and Bruce was too keen-eyed not to know that, and not to retain the good he had by the utmost vigilance, biding his time in the hope of making himself indispensable to Rob. Bruce was nineteen; Rob felt sometimes, and for a brief moment as if she were drifting towards a trap, for she was a little girl at heart still, and shrank like a wild bird from a retaining hand.