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things at home without a word. When I was in bed, however, and she was hanging up my clothes, she said:
    "I don't know what's got into you, Miss Barbara. You are that cross that there's no living with you."
    "Oh, go away," I said.
    "And what's more," she added, "I don't know but what your mother ought to know about these goingson. You're only a little girl, with all your high and mightiness, and there's going to be no scandal in this Familey if I can help it."
    I put the bedclothes over my head, and she went out.
    But of course I could not sleep. Sis was not home yet, or mother, and I went into Sis's room and got a novel from her table. It was the story of a woman who had married a man in a hurry, and without really loving him, and when she had been married a year, and hated the very way her husband drank his coffee and cut the ends off his cigars, she found some one she really loved with her Whole Heart. And it was too late. But she wrote him one Letter, the other man, you know, and it caused a lot of trouble. So she said--I remember the very words--
    "Half the troubles in the world are caused by Letters. Emotions are changable things"--this was after she had found that she really loved her husband after all, but he had had to shoot himself before she found it out, although not fataly--"but the written word does not change. It remains always, embodying a dead truth and giving it apparent life. No woman should ever put her thoughts on paper."
    She got the Letter back, but she had to steal it. And it turned out that the other man had really only wanted her money all the time.
    That story was a real ilumination to me. I shall have a great deal of money when I am of age, from my grandmother. I saw it all. It was a trap sure enough. And if I was to get out I would have to have the letter.
    IT WAS THE LETTER THAT PUT ME IN HIS POWER.
    The next day was Xmas. I got a lot of things, including the necklace, and a mending basket from Sis, with the hope that it would make me tidey, and father had bought me a set of Silver Fox, which mother did not approve of, it being too expencive for a young girl to wear, according to her. I must say that for an hour or two I was happy enough.
    But the afternoon was terrable. We keep open house on Xmas afternoon, and father makes a champagne punch, and somebody pours tea, although nobody drinks it, and there are little cakes from the Club, and the house is decorated with poin--(Memo: Not in the Dictionery and I cannot spell it, although not usualy troubled as to spelling.)
    At eleven o'clock the mail came in, and mother sorted it over, while father took a gold piece out to the post-man.
    There were about a million cards, and mother glanced at the addresses and passed them round. But suddenly she frowned. There was a small parcel, addressed to me.
    "This looks like a Gift, Barbara," she said. And proceded to open it.
    My heart skipped two beats, and then hamered. Mother's mouth was set as she tore off the paper and opened the box. There was a card, which she glanced at, and underneath, was a book of poems.
    "Love Lyrics," said mother, in a terrable voice. "To Barbara, from H----"
    "Mother----" I began, in an ernest tone.
    "A child of mine recieving such a book from a man!" she went on. "Barbara, I am speachless."
    But she was not speachless. If she was speachless for the next half hour, I would hate to hear her really converse. And all that I could do was to bear it. For I had made a Frankenstein--see the book read last term by the Literary Society--not out of grave-yard fragments, but from malted milk tablets, so to speak, and now it was pursuing me to an early grave. For I felt that I simply could not continue to live.
    "Now--where does he live?"
    "I--don't know, mother."
    "You sent him a Letter."
    "I don't know where he lives, anyhow."
    "Leila," mother said, "will you ask Hannah to bring my smelling salts?"
    "Aren't you going to give me the book?" I asked. "It--it sounds interesting."
    "You are