Aline's letter is from Pierce. As she reads it I watch her face unobserved. It is lit up as though she were reading a love-letter. The love between those two is wonderful. We all understand, at least Esther and I do, how it is that Aline can refuse so heartlessly, year after year, that poor good Mr. Benson. Why, with her immense love for Pierce, and the overflowing of it for all us, unworthy, she has none left for a lover or a husband. Not but that we are devoutly grateful for Aline's celibacy, since she is happy in it, for what on earth would we do without her? Of course, she would make an exquisite parson's wife, beneficent without being meddling; but then she is more exquisite as our sister. It is now five years since Pierce left us; he will be twenty-seven the 3rd of next June. Freda was twenty-five in February, and Aline has actually entered the thirties. Pierce was a tall, slim, active fellow when he went away, with Aline's golden hair and blue eyes, and Aline's sudden radiant smile in a serious face. Those two always rather held aloof from us, much as a very devoted husband and wife might hold aloof from their grown-up children. They used to walk together a good deal in the woods, and when Pierce would go fishing Aline would accompany him with her basket of mending or her book, and sit by him through the long hours of the day, while we young barbarians held our revels unchecked. [Illustration: "THEY USED TO WALK TOGETHER A GOOD DEAL IN THE WOODS."] It must have been a great blow to Aline when Pierce went so far away. She has always had an air of loneliness since, as of one who has lost her mate. We have a way of going in couples in our family. Aline and Pierce, Esther and I, the twins of course, and those two dear boys who are always together. I don't know where Freda came in, but of course it mattered less, as she married so young, and was so absorbed in her Jim. Pierce's going came about through Mr. Desmond's visiting the old country. Mr. Desmond is one of our personalities, and we are immensely proud of him, especially as he was born on Brandon estate. He is the son of a small tenant-farmer, and came into the world, one would say, with a very hard iron spoon in his mouth, and the same spoon quite ignorant of even wholesome stirabout. However, despite his humble origin, he has become a great man, a pioneer in dark continents, a letter-in of light on the hidden places of the earth. He is very wealthy and powerful, yet he is very simple, and as plain-living almost and plain-spoken as the peasants he sprang from. All his people are long dead, and the little house where he was born levelled to the ground; so it must have been a lonely home-coming for him when he arrived that May day now more than five years ago, and, walking into the wretched little "Brandon Arms", asked if he could have a bed and board for a few days.