"'I wish everybody in the world could be as happy as I am. I am sending Stuart's picture, so that you can see for yourself what a fine, splendid fellow you are to have for a cousin some day. Give my love to your father and mother and Betty, and do write soon and tell me that you are glad. "'Your loving cousin, "'EUGENIA.'" Lloyd looked up from the reading of the letter, wondering what sort of an expression she would find on her mother's face. To her surprise, it was one of approval, and there were tears in her eyes. "Poor motherless child!" said Mrs. Sherman, softly. "I shall write to her to-day. I don't approve of early marriages, but Eugenia has always been more mature than most girls of her age, and she does need a home sadly. The care and pleasure of one will develop her character in a way that nothing else will. Let me see. She will be nearly twenty next June. Yes, I have no doubt but that, with this next year's training in housekeeping which she intends to take, she will be far better fitted for home-making than many an older woman." "And may Betty and I be bridesmaids?" interrupted Lloyd, eagerly, a starlike expectancy shining in her eyes. Mrs. Sherman considered a moment, then answered, slowly: "There is no reason why you should not be, so long as you are willing to go as little maids, and not young ladies. I am very jealous for your girlhood, Lloyd dear. I must guard against anything that would shorten it in the least. Mother's baby must not grow up too fast." "I don't want to grow up fast, honestly!" cried Lloyd, scrambling to her feet and tripping over the long skirts again as she threw her arms around her mother's neck. "I'm not dignified enough yet to fit yoah dresses, and my hair simply won't stay up. Sweet sixteen doesn't seem half as old when you really get there as you think that it is going to. I'll do my hair down and weah short skirts as long as you want me to, but, oh, I'm so glad that I'm going to be a bridesmaid! It will be _such_ fun. I must write to Betty this minute to tell her that you are willing." That night Lloyd sat before her dressing-table again, this time with the new photographs propped up in front of her. Stuart's picture almost seemed to bring Phil before her eyes, and for a moment, instead of the familiar walls of her room, she saw the moonlighted desert, and smelled the orange-blossoms, and heard a strong young voice ringing out across the silence of the sandy cactus plains: "Till the sun grows cold, And the stars are old, And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold."