is just like a brother, you know."

This was just what James Pitkin did not believe in, and now as he is
walking over hill and dale from Cambridge College to his father's house
he is gathering up a decided resolution to tell Diana that he is not and
will not be to her as a brother--that she must be to him all or nothing.
James is the brightest, the tallest, and, the Mapleton girls said, the
handsomest of the Pitkin boys. He is a strong-hearted, generous, resolute
fellow as ever undertook to walk thirty-five miles home to eat his
Thanksgiving dinner.

[Illustration: Diana.]

We are not sure that Miss Diana is not thinking of him quite as much as
he of her, as she stands there with the long kitchen shovel in one hand,
and one plump white arm thrust into the oven, and her little head cocked
on one side, her brows bent, and her rosy mouth pursed up with a solemn
sense of the importance of her judgment as she is testing the heat of her
oven.

Oh, Di, Di! for all you seem to have nothing on your mind but the
responsibility for all those pumpkin pies and cranberry tarts, we
wouldn't venture a very large wager that you are not thinking about
cousin James under it all at this very minute, and that all this pretty
bustling housewifeliness owes its spice and flavor to the thought that
James is coming to the Thanksgiving dinner.

To be sure if any one had told Di so, she would have flouted the very
idea. Besides, she had privately informed Almira Sisson, her special
particular confidante, that she knew Jim would come home from college