Maude could not well describe him. She only knew that he was taller

than J.C., and, as she thought, much finer looking, with deep blue

eyes, dark brown hair, and a mouth just fitted to his voice. Farther

than this she could not tell. "But you will see him in the morning,"

she said. "I have told him how gifted, how good, you are, and to-

morrow, he says, he shall visit you in your den."

"Don't let the other one come," said Louis hastily, "for if he can't

endure red hands he'd laugh at my withered feet and the bunch upon

my back; but the other one won't, I know."

Maude knew so too, and somewhat impatiently she waited for the

morrow, when she could introduce her brother to her friend. The

morrow came, but, as was frequently the case, Louis was suffering

from a severe pain in his back, which kept him confined to his room,

so that Mr. De Vere neither saw him at all nor Maude as much as he

wished to do. He had been greatly interested in her, and when at

dinner he heard that she would not be down he was conscious of a

feeling of disappointment. She was not present at supper either, but

after it was over she joined him in the parlor, and, together with

J.C. and Nellie, accompanied him to the graveyard, where, seating

herself upon her mother's grave, she told him of that mother, and

the desolation which crept into her heart when first she knew she

was an orphan. From talking of her mother it was an easy matter to

speak of her Vernon home, which she had never seen since she left it

twelve years before, and then Mr. De Vere asked if she had met two

boys in the cars on her way to Albany. At first Maude could not

recall them, and when at last she did so her recollections were so

vague that Mr. De Vere felt another pang of disappointment, though

wherefore he could not tell, unless indeed, he thought there would

be something pleasant in being remembered twelve long years by a

girl like Maude Remington. He reminded her of her remark made to his

cousin, and in speaking of him casually alluded to his evident

liking for Nellie, saying playfully, "Who knows, Miss Remington, but

you may some time be related to me--not my cousin exactly, though

Cousin Maude sounds well. I like that name."

"I like it too," she said impulsively, "much better than Miss

Remington, which seems so stiff."




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