Later, when she was alone and reposing comfortably in the billowy feather bed, she laughed wickedly and delightedly.

"Oh, what would Aunt Cornelia do if she knew I swore right before the new mini er! She'd leave town, I do believe. I thought I liked him very well, but I don't know. I like a minister to live up to his calling, and he should not have been amused. It was frivolous in him to know so much about the world. If he weren't a minister I know I'd like him, but as he is a minister I'd like him to be different."

The next afternoon her aunt announced that she had to attend a club meeting from which, she regretted to say, outsiders were excluded. Polly appeared resigned, however, and after her aunt's eparture she wandered about the house seeking diversion. She found it in her aunt's bedroom in the shape of a wig, for her aunt had to resort to a false headgear, having lost her hair through ill.

"I don't look unlike aunt," she thought, only I am young and plump. We look Like the advertisements for 'before and after taking.'"

In pursuance of the resemblance she tried on a black silken gown of her aunt's. She had just pinned

"Certainly, my dear Miss Laflin. You may command and trust me.'

"I have a niece visiting me-a well meaning girl, but brought up in a worldly way, and, Mr. Winters, will you believe me, she actually at times-dear me, how can I tell you-she swears!"

"No, Miss Laflin! You amaze me! It cannot be possible!"

"Horrid hypocrite!" thought Polly again.

Hearing voices on the porch, she looked out and beheld her aunt entering in company with a man. Dismayed, she snatched the wig from her head regard

mer, Photo.

"Coming for a ministerial call. He won't recognize me in this outfit, and he has never seen aunt. I shall personate her!"

Be

She hastened to admit the caller. "How do you do-Mr. Winters, is it not?" I am Miss Cornelia Laflin. seated, please. I thought I was never going to meet my pastor, I was so sorry was out when you called before."

He politely regretted the fact also and proceeded to talk of the church matters.

"Hypocrite!" thought Polly. "I'll test him further."

"Mr. Winters, I don't suppose I ought

less of the effect upon the minister. She had just concealed it when her aunt and companion entered.

"I made a mistake in the date, Polly. This is our pastor, Mr. Winters. My niece, Miss Lester, Mr. Winters. I met Mr. Winters on his way here.'

"Well, John, what are you doing here?" asked the minister after acknowledging the introduction to Polly. Let me introduce my cousin, Mr. Winters, though I presume you have introduced yourself."

"Yes, I introduced myself," he replied cheerfully.

"Polly!" exclaimed her aunt, staring at her niece. "What in the world have

you got my dress on for?"

"Why, Aunt Cornelia, I was just try

ing it on when Mr. Winters rang and I had no time to change."

"And do you know," said John, compelling Polly's averted eyes to meet his, "for just half an instant as you opened the door I thought you were Miss Laflin, and then I at once recognized you as the young lady I saw alighting from the train last night."

In the Smart Little Trap.

BY VIRGINIA LEILA WENTZ.
Copyright, 1906, by Homer Sprague.

"And he has the smartest looking trap you ever saw, Madge! It's champagne colored and a perfect love. What do you bet I don't land him, trap and all, before the summer's flown by?"

Miss Irene Warden, a beauty (and aware of it), was writing to her girl chum concerning the bachelor who had just taken the big colonial house with the carriage road and iron archway which for several seasons now had abandoned hope of useful

ness.

She was writing by an open window where the scent of the roses came up from the front garden. Beyond lay the pretty tree-lined road over which the bachelor and his champagne colored trap had just flown by.

rival up in this out-of-the-way place except old Professor Thornton's daughter, and she's the quietest poke of a girl-a regular stay-at-home. And as for dressingwell, Madge, you and I spend as much on our gloves and veils, I reckon, as she does on her whole outfit. That's what comes from having a bookworm for a father."

The next week in the little village postoffice a friend presented Mr. Horace Matlock to Miss Irene Warden. Apparently the meeting was by accident, but Miss Warden felt her smooth cheeks flush, and her habitual composure was rippled for a second, while, for his part, Mr. Matlock scarcely looked at her and, having passed a conventional "glad to meet you," lifted his hat politely and walked out to his smart little trap.

"I had on my chic voile, the one Aunt Tessie sent me from Paris, you know," wrote Miss Warden to Madge, "and my

"Although I've told you his name is Horace Matlock," ran on Miss Warden's pen, "I haven't told you what he looks like. He's an old man, forty or fifty, I should say. His nose is rather too big, although people call him handsome, and he's a bit bald, but, then, I suppose most men who live in big houses and drive smart traps have big noses. What?" Miss Warden smiled a little soft smile into the glass above her dressing table and then bent over her portfolio again:

AND HIS DUMMY ENGINE.

"Of course I'd prefer dear old Tom. He's young and stunning and sings college songs so beautifully, but, as you know, he hasn't a red! And I really must do something this summer, Madge. My already meager allowance will be cut considerably in the autumn, for in September pa's going to enter the matrimonial game himself-a horrid, designing widow, too! So I must 'step lively,' in the parlance of street car officials.

"In point of fact, though," pursued the voluble pen, "it'll be pretty easy, plain sailing. I haven't a single good-looking

big white hat with flopping fuchsias. But it was all rank waste.'

She couldn't understand it. Her dreams hadn't ended that way at all.

One day in the tiny idle little bank Mr. Horace Matlock stopped short as he recognized a stooped, gaunt figure with a patrician face.

"Why, it's Professor Thornton, isn't it?" he cried, stepping up to him with a cordially outstretched hand.

When Matlock years ago had entered Yale as a freshman Thornton had been tutoring, and quite a friendship had sprung up between them. Subsequently they had lost track of each other. But the satisfaction of the younger man in meeting the older one again was genuine.

"Poor old professor! How thin and worn and aged he's become!" thought Matlock as he drove the professor home to his modest little cottage.

Out in the cottage's side yard by the hollyhocks a girl was picking a great bunch of sweet peas for the lunch table. When she heard the smart little trap stop at the gate she looked quickly up from the blossoming vines and wondered. Who was the distinguished looking stranger? And where had he picked up dear daddy?

A few days later Matlock drove up to the cottage again. It was only decent, he told himself, that he should show the professor some attention and take him driving now and then. Perhaps some day also he would take the professor's daughter. He liked her. He liked the natural, unabashed way in which she had ac

parlor came the first chords of Beethoven's beautiful "Moonlight Sonata."

"That's Cynthia," said Professor Thornton in answer to his guest's start of surprise. "She's never too tired, no matter how hard or long the day has been, to play that sonata for me in the evening. I love it above all other written music, and she never forgets."

Then while the tree toads droned their harmonies he told Matlock a little about his daughter-how four years ago he had suffered a paralytic stroke and she had been obliged to leave school in her graduating year and nurse him night and day with untiring sweetness; how, when their slender income was exhausted a year back, she had begun to make use of her musical skill and give lessons on the piano. And when the professor told of Cynthia's

knowledged her father's presentation of him, with her sleeves rolled up and her arms full of sweet peas; he liked the width between her eyes, the breadth of her brow, the lines of her mouth. She was less pretty than many young girls, but there was about her a freshness, a sweetness, that pleased him, and he had noticed that her figure in her simple little gown was well moulded and slim.

One evening toward twilight, when out in the open lawn bats were whirling aimlessly and tirelessly. Matlock dropped in upon the professor to make him a little call. He had fetched him his afternoon mail as pretext. While they were sitting out on the porch from the shadowy little

tri-weekly trips to Adams, the nearest town, his silvered head went down on his coat sleeve, and in the gloaming behind the honeysuckles the two men were silent.

Presently they smoked their usual cigars and indulged in their usual conversation -newspaper topics chopped fine by individual opinion, a good deal of politics, a little of art and science. Last of all Cynthia came out.

"Delighted!" she said, going prettily up to Matlock with outstretched hands. "While you two have been gossiping I've been remembering your weakness for tea and have drawn you a cup. Will you come in, or shall we have it out here?"

They went in. Near the little fern screened fireplace was a tea table, dainty in its array of polished silver and thin china. The hanging lamp shed its rich, soft glow, of olive oil, and there was an air of intimate home-likeness about everything. Matlock had been a stranger to that sort of thing for so long that it sent a kind of thrill shivering through him. After all, to have a cozy tea-table and a slim white hand to inclose in yours-Cynthia's hands were slim and white enough as they moved among the china in the half light. He pulled a chair close for the professor, and then sat down himself.

Before Mr. Horace Matlock went to bed that night he remembered that on the morrow Cynthia Thornton was to drive with him in his champagne colored trap. How it would harmonize with her soft hair before the ambitious sun touched it to gold! What a dear, womanly little treasure of girlish brightness she was, anyhow!

Čynthia only returned from Adams the next day a half hour before her drive and was, consequently, a bit tired. She was not one to make conversation, and the quiet and beauty of the scenes stretched out before her made her very silent. Matlock, as he handled the reins, watched both her and the landscape. There was a certain peace about them both. And peace was, above all things, what he wanted.

The next day Miss Warden wrote to her girl chum again:

summer,

"In the beginning of the Madge, dear, I wrote you that a certain matrimonial venture would be 'easy, plain sailing.' Alas! I'm afraid I shall never find port-not, at least, with my bachelor up on the hill. And in the name of wonders, who of all people do you suppose has taken the wind out of my sails? Cynthia Thornton, the old bookworm's daughter! He had her out driving in that little beauty of a trap three times during the last week to my knowledge! I'm afraid Cupid isn't very kind to me. You'll find I'll die an old maid after all, unless Tom❞—

At this point Miss Warden's pretty teeth absently caught the top of her penholder, while she looked dreamily toward the sunny, tree-lined street. Then she began to hum.

As she started on the fourth bar of her song a champagne colored trap skimmed by. In it was the charming bachelor, and by his side was Cynthia Thornton.

Something to Sell.

BY FRANCIS A. COREY.

Copyright, 1906, by W. R. Caldwell. At the ringing of the doorbell a blush blended suddenly with the happy smile

on Elizabeth Mellen's lips. It was Teddy Davenport, of course! Hadn't he called regularly at this hour of the afternoon for weeks and weeks?

"I'm so glad you've come, Teddy," she cried, giving him both her hands.

She always had for him this warm, impulsive greeting. But Davenport was not responsive for once. The slender, jeweled hands were quickly released. His lips wore no answering smile. There was a new line in his face.

"Something has gone wrong, Teddy,” she said in her quick, direct way. "Yes."

"Is it so very, very bad?"

"As bad as it well can be," he groaned. Elizabeth paled a little. Teddy was not one to take alarm at nothing. But instead of asking what troubled him she drew a little nearer and said:

I

"Let the unpleasant news wait. want to talk of something else. Yesterday we were debating whether we would announce our engagement at once or not until next month. Why not settle the question now?"

"That's the very thing I came to talk about!" he exclaimed. Then he went on hurriedly, before she could make any

response.

"Elizabeth, I'm glad now that we took no one into our confidence. 'Twill make things easier and better for you. You are no weakling; you may as well have the truth straight out. I very much fear that everything will have to be given up."

She looked at him for a moment as if stunned. "What-what do you mean?"

"You know, dear, nearly my whole fortune was put into Lookout mine. I so wanted to double it. Then I'd be as rich as you. A man likes to have as much money as the woman he weds. So I took a desperate risk. Everything promised well at first, but I've just had a wire from headquarters. The mine has gone smash-water, you see-utterly worthless. Nobody would take it as a gift."

"Oh, Teddy, I'm so sorry!" she said.

"Of course it means financial ruin. I'll have to begin again at the bottom of the ladder. It may take years to work my way up. It would be unjust to you to ask you to wait. I will not do it. I give you back your promise. You are free.

A sudden trembling of the white lips showed what the words cost him. The look on his haggard face went to Elizabeth's heart. She was deeply in love with Teddy Davenport. She loved him for his handsome face, his manliness, his courage and strength, his high notions of honor. With a swift, impulsive gesture she slipped two slender white arms, lost

at the elbow in enchanting frills of lace, about his neck.

"But I don't want to be free," she cried. "Oh, what a goose you are, Teddy! As if I hadn't money enough for us both and wouldn't deem it a privilege to share all I possess with you!"

He released himself resolutely from the clasping arms.

"Yes, Elizabeth, I know you would do it, and willingly, if I would permit the sacrifice. But I will not. How can I take so much and give nothing in return?" "You will give yourself. That is enough."

"Not from a man's standpoint. Don't tempt me. I had this fight out by myself

room at the rear of the library, she took the telephone directory from its shelf, ran her finger down the long column of names until she came to the letter S. Then she called up Mr. Sanford of the legal firm of Sanford & Rollins, and the following conversation took place:

"Mr. Sanford, you have charge of Mr. Theodore Davenport's business affairs?" "Yes."

"Is it true that his Lookout shares have greatly depreciated in value?"

"Excuse me, madam. This is private matter. I cannot discuss it with a stranger."

"You needn't be afraid. Mr. Davenport has just gone from here. I'm Miss

W. P. Connors.

before I came. I shall always love you, always be true to you, but until fortune smiles again we can be only friends."

Elizabeth loved him the better for his unyielding firmness and pride. After he had gone she stood for a long time at the window, the light gone out of her beautiful eyes. With a pity that so paltry a thing as the loss of fortune should wreck the happiness of two lives! Could nothing be done?

Suddenly a thought came to her like an inspiration and she acted upon it at once. Crossing the wide hall to a small

P. J. Maund.

W. E. King, C. E. 646. -Courtesy Bro. Farver, F. A. E. Elizabeth Mellen of Gramercy Park." "Oh-ah-yes!" It was curious-the change that had come into the voice at the other end of the wire. "Of course, then, it is quite unnecessary to keep anything back. The mine is in very bad shape-even worse than Davenport is aware."

"I'd like to have a talk with you, Mr. Sanford, if I may. Can you call at my house this evening at 8 to meet my business manager?"

"I will come with pleasure, Miss Mellen."