seemed. She didn't chatter in her wonted lively way, interspersing her characteristic little sallies with flippant and naughty remarks which were gayly taken back or amended before they were cold. Indeed she did not speak at all except to answer a question when she was addressed.

Mr. Langley's heart sank. It seemed to him as if the girl were sad. He couldn't bear the thought of real sorrow coming to Rusty thus prematurely— yet it didn't seem like wrath or resentment or any youthful emotion that had given her this grave dignity. It affected him almost as if it had been his own little Ella May.

Anna came in and rattled on in her lively way, which was quite different from Rusty's. As the minister looked at her, so painfully thin, so fragile, with her blue-veined delicacy and her doll-like prettiness, he caught Rusty's eyes fixed sadly upon her. And he wondered if he hadn't discovered the cause of the girl's pensiveness. It might well be that the story this little elder sister had had to tell of the hardships and suffering she had undergone had been too much for Rusty's warm heart. She knew the world so little and was doubtless shocked and grieved that such things could be.

As he went on his way, Mr. Langley decided that he would have a little talk with Rusty some day soon. Meantime he would see Reuben. He didn't

know just what he meant to ask of Reuben; and he smiled to realize that he, too, was beginning to consult Reuben as an oracle.

As for Mabel Graham, once for all he decided that he would do nothing to arouse Rusty's sympathy toward her unamiable classmate. And after all, if there were, or if there should be anything Rusty could do for Mabel, she would discover it for herself and go about it in her own inimitable way.

His purpose still vague, yet with all confidence, Mr. Langley went to Reuben within a few days. But he was both surprised and disappointed. Reuben didn't seem at all himself, though it wasn't easy to see wherein he was different. Though it didn't strike him so quickly nor so keenly, it seemed as if the boy was almost as changed as the girl had been. And then it came to the clergyman that the same thing must have saddened them both, and he felt it still more likely that it was revelations Anna Miller had made. He remained only long enough to feel that it was somehow impossible for Reuben to disburden himself, and then went rather sadly on his way. He felt that he couldn't do anything about it for the present.

Mr. Langley was right only in the fact that both Rusty and Reuben seemed unlike themselves, and that the same reason lay back of it in the case of

each. But Reuben had been long in apprehending that something was wrong between himself and Rusty. School had begun, and Anna was established at Miss Penny's, doing her best and very well, though not filling Rusty's place, before he realized that Rusty was different.

The girl had chosen occasions to visit Miss Penny when she knew he would not be there, and it was only when he walked home from school with her one night of the first week that he discovered anything amiss. At first he thought he must have, in some unknown, inexplicable manner, hurt or offended her; but, partly because he knew himself to be innocent, and partly from the way she carried herself, he decided that it was not that. Rusty had often been angry with him, but except for the wonder (it never failed to surprise him) and the temporary pain, that hadn't been so bad; she had gotten over her ill-temper so quickly and had been so absolutely charming afterward. Now, for the first time, she was cold and distant-not angry, but scornfully cool. There was no temper about this. It was-resolution!

That night and for many days Reuben searched his memory in the vain endeavor to discover wherein he had erred. He resolved again and again to question Rusty, but he never did so. Her bearing always forbade; the words froze on his lips. And more and more he inclined to the belief that it

wasn't anything he had done; it was just what he was and couldn't help. He was too old and stolid, and lively Rusty was tired of his stupid companionship. It came to him more strongly that she had, indeed, proposed sending Anna to Miss Penny; and now he knew she must have done so in order that she wouldn't be forced to see so much of him.

For the first time in his life Reuben was unhappy. But being naturally serious and reserved, he showed it very little; he merely applied himself to study as never before. His promise to Mr. Phillips, and the rivalry of Mabel Graham, could not have compelled such strict and unrelenting concentration. And Rusty, being equally unhappy, with similar need of forgetting herself in study, though lacking in his power of concentration, likewise buried herself in her books. Whereupon records began to be established at the academy that almost threatened Mabel Graham's, and she had to look to her laurels.

CHAPTER XXVII

HE experiment tried that year with the seniors

at the academy (and relinquished after one trial), though eminently successful with a student like Reuben Cartwright, was not so well adapted to the majority of the class, and proved singularly unsuited to a pupil of the type of Mabel Graham. Intended as an introduction to research and original work, in her case it served only as a short cut to the desired end.

In mathematics the class worked out their own rules, principles, and formulæ. In their other courses, the work consisted of lectures and recitations in the ratio of three of the former to two of the latter, with outside reading from history and reference books. They were expected to take notes of the lectures with pencils and transcribe them later at home into the loose-leafed note-books, making each topic a subject of careful thought before they expanded it.

Of course the thoughtful Reuben delighted in the process. Mabel Graham liked it, but for a different reason. Her writing was unusually good, and while