The years have passed quietly since then, and brought few changes except in our ages. We have never seen Freda since, though she writes long letters to Aline full of the old affection. She has never come to us, nor asked any of us to go to her, and we have almost given up thinking that she will ever accept Aline's tenderly-worded invitations, or that any of us will ever share the pleasures of her London life. Not that she writes very often from London. She seems to be usually at one country-house or another, and sometimes great names are mentioned in her letters, names of men we have heard of and would dearly like to see. Her permanent address is Magnolia Cottage, Grove Avenue, Parson's Green, which, we think, sounds pretty and countrified. Aline always says that she is so pleased that Mrs. Vincent and Freda had the good sense to settle in a country place rather than in Belgravia or Mayfair, or even Kensington, which she has heard are stuffy. Freda's home must be, she thinks, in some outlying village or other, though within reach of London. We imagine it a quiet place with a church and a little bit of common, and the houses of a few gentlefolk, standing round amid their hollies and laurels. It must be so good for Jacky, who does not seem to go with Freda to the country-houses, to live among rural surroundings rather than in the dust and smoke of the great city. One event of the years has been Pierce's quarrel with Mr. Desmond, though they had seemed, from the letters Pierce wrote during their first years together, to be almost like father and son, or perhaps it would be better to say, like an elder and younger brother who dearly loved each other. Pierce's letters in the old days were full of Mr. Desmond, for whom he seemed to have a kind of hero-worship. Then, without warning, we heard that they had quarrelled, and that Pierce had left Mr. Desmond and gone farther up country. We never heard what the quarrel was about. Pierce merely wrote to Aline that the thing was so; though behind the quiet of his letter there was evidently a cold anger against his former friend. Then Mr. Desmond wrote to Aline--a letter that I, for one, liked, it was so gentle and deprecatory. He seemed to feel that Aline had trusted him with Pierce, and that he had failed to keep his trust, but not through any fault of his own. He, too, gave no explanation of the quarrel, but only said something about young blood being hot, and his hope that presently the boy would cool down and recognize his real friends, and come back to him. This letter Aline never answered. Of course she stood by Pierce, and thought Mr. Desmond must have been in the wrong. But though she carried it off so bravely, because her pride and love were up in arms, afterwards she fretted about Pierce. You see our boys have been such home-keeping boys that we are afraid, knowing that one is out in the wide world.