lying upon the floor.

"Stand still," said Sal, more sternly than she had ever before spoken
to Mary, who, half frightened out of her wits stood still while the
other one was extracted.

"There," said Sal, when the operation was finished, "you look a
hundred per cent. better."

For a time Mary cried and spit, hardly knowing whether the relished
the joke or not; but when Billy praised her improved looks, telling
her that "her mouth was real pretty," and when she herself dried her
eyes enough to see that it was a great improvement, she felt better,
and wondered why she had never thought to have them out before.

Rapidly and pleasantly to Mary that winter passed away, for the
presence of Billy was in itself a sufficient reason why she should be
happy. He was so affectionate and brother-like in his deportment
towards her, that she began questioning whether she did not love him
as well, if not better, than she did her sister Ella, whom she seldom
saw, though she heard that she had a governess from Worcester, and was
taking music lessons on a grand piano which had been bought a year
before. Occasionally Billy called at Mrs. Campbell's, but Ella seemed
shy and unwilling to speak of her sister.

"Why is there this difference?" he thought more than once, as he
contrasted the situation, of the two girls,--the one petted, caressed,
and surrounded by every luxury, and the other forlorn, desolate, and
the inmate of a poor-house; and then he built castles of a future,
when, by the labor of his own head or hands, Mary, too, should be rich