that she was the one chosen for the voyage.

She did not enter with great heartiness into the plans for the summer, and Miss Briggs soon dismissed her.

"But come in again at five o'clock and have some 'cakes and tea,'" she said, with great meaning. "My poor cakes and tea! Oh, it was outrageous! I shall never pardon Millicent."

So Peggy went home, or rather to her uncle's house, for the girls shared the school-room there. After lessons were over, and they were left alone together, Peggy broke the silence.

"Did you write those lines to Cousin Appolina, Mill?"

"No; of course not, Peggy. It must have been Joan."

"Do you really think so?"

"Yes; and I feel dreadfully about it. Not so much because I will lose the trip, but because she has been so deceitful. I can't understand it. To think, too, of your being the one to go, after all."

"But why didn't you tell Cousin Appolina that you didn't write it?"

"It wasn't worth while. I knew it must have been either you or Joan, and I thought if you did it you would say so. If Joan did it—well, Peggy, I didn't want to. I feel dreadfully about Joan's having done it. I shall talk to the child, and— But I can't bear to think she did it, and I would rather have Cousin Appolina think it was I than little Joan."

"You are very generous," said Peggy.

"No, I am not. I shouldn't be the one to go, anyhow. Of course the whole thing is terribly dishonorable, but I must save Joan."

Peggy said nothing for a long time. Then she asked, "What time does Joan get home to-day?"

"Not until late, for she is going to lunch with one of the girls, and then to the Dog Show with her."

"Well, I must go home. I'll see you again before the day is over." And Peggy departed to her own house. "What a good girl Millicent is," she thought. "I have laughed at her and made endless fun of her for her poetry-making, I have thought she was stupid over her lessons, and not half as bright or as much to be admired as myself, and here she is ten times more generous, ten times more honorable, ten times better than I am in every way. I am a wretch, a conceited, deceitful, mean, stuck-up, and everything else that is horrible wretch. But I don't want to give up and tell Cousin Appolina that I did it."

At twenty minutes of five that afternoon Peggy again appeared in Millicent's room. An odor of smoke filled the air, and Milly seemed to be wrestling with the tongs and some burning paper at the fireplace.

"What are you doing?" asked Peggy, much surprised. "Building a fire this warm day?"

"I—I—am burning my—my poetry," replied Millicent, struggling with her tears as well as with the tones. "I am never going to write another line. Every one laughed so that I don't believe there is much real poetry in it, and I am never, never going to write again. What a horrid smell that m-morocco c-cover makes!"

Peggy would have laughed had she been in a happier frame of mind. As it was, she said, solemnly: "Open the window and leave the room to air off, Mill. I want you to come out with me. I am going to Cousin Appolina's."

"But I can't go there, Peggy. You know she told me not to come again."

"You must, Milly. You really must. I will be responsible for it. I can't go alone. You must go with me."

Finally Millicent put on her hat, and for the second time that day the two set forth for their cousin's house.

Miss Briggs was in her drawing-room. The tea tray had just been placed before her, the celebrated cakes reposed in the old silver cake basket conveniently at hand, the man had left the room, when again the Misses Reid were announced.

Miss Briggs looked up and raised her lorgnette.

"You have made a mistake," she said. "I am not at home to Millicent."

"Yes, you are, Cousin Appolina!" cried Peggy, rushing forward and causing a bronze Hermes to totter as she brushed past it—"yes, you are more at home to Milly than you are to me. For she didn't write them, Cousin Appolina. She didn't write the lines about you. I have brought her with me to hear me confess. She is as innocent as—as that piece of statuary. I wrote the verses. I did!"

For a moment there was an alarming silence, but Peggy, having once begun her confession, courageously continued.

"I did it to frighten Milly. I put it in the box, but 'way underneath, for her to see when the poems came home. I thought it would be such fun to watch her when she read it, and found it had been to the fair with the others. Of course it was just my luck to have you find it, but, it was a silly, foolish thing to do, just as it was perfectly horrid of me to make Milly send her own verses to the fair. That was my fault, too. I urged her to do it just to get some fun out of it, and I didn't get a bit.

"Then this morning, when you thought Milly had written them all, and she didn't say anything, I thought I would let it pass, for I wanted dreadfully to go to England, and I knew that her chances were over on account of the slippers. Well, I was firm about it for an hour or so, and then I found how generous Milly was to say nothing, and she thought Joan had done it, and was going to scold her, and— Oh, well, I don't think it pays to deceive! I never was so unhappy in my life as I have been to-day. Milly, you dear old soul, say you forgive me!"

During this long speech Millicent had time to think the matter over. Her chief feeling was one of thankfulness that it was not Joanna who had done this thing. And Millicent had a sweet nature and never harbored anger very long.

Of course it was a dreadful thing for Peggy to have done, but her cousin knew how dearly she loved a joke, and though it had been wrong for her to deceive Miss Briggs and herself this morning, she had not kept it up long, and it was easy to see that she was sorry enough for it now.

So when Peggy asked her to forgive her, Millicent's answer was a warm kiss.

"And have I nothing to forgive?"

It was Miss Briggs who put the question.

"Yes, of course you have, Cousin Appolina! I am terribly sorry that I ever did such a thing. It was rude, impertinent, everything that was bad. I hope you will forgive me. Of course it is all true, but I needn't have said it."

"True?"

"Why, yes. You know you are a dame of high degree, and you have always scolded me, and in your winter bonnet and big fur cape you were—er—well, a sight rather strange for to see. And it is perfectly true you are soon going to set sail across the sea and you won't take us all three, and sometimes, you know, Cousin Appolina, you don't agree very well, especially with me. And you do love cakes and tea, but so do I, so that isn't anything. And you say yourself you pride yourself on your pedigree."

"And no one has a better right. But there is one line that you have left out. You called me an ancient, awful she!"

Peggy paused.

"I know," she said, slowly, "that was dreadful, but—but it is partly true. I suppose you can't truthfully call yourself very young, Cousin Appolina, and sometimes you can be very awful."

Another pause.

"You may both go home," said Miss Briggs.

And they went.