between her bright lines one or two irrepressible meanings that locked
his jaws till they creaked.

In fact, both his brother and hers were "ailing." Both carried a jaded,
almost a broken look, and Arthur was taking things to make him eat and
sleep; while Leonard had daily accepted more and more of the young
rector's complicating cares, until he was really the parish's chief
burden-bearer.

"No," he said to his father, "Arthur carries his whole work manfully on
his own shoulders."

"But, my son," replied the old General, "don't you see you're carrying
Arthur?"

"No, I sha'n't do that," dryly responded the son; but Ruth saw a change
on his brow as on that of a guide who fears he has missed the path.

The four young friends spent many delightful evenings together in the
Winslow house, with Mrs. Morris and the General on one side at cribbage.
Ruth had frequent happy laughs, observing Isabel's gift for making
Leonard talk. It gave her a new joy in both of them to have the lovely
hostess draw him out, out, out, on every matter in the wide arena to
which he so vitally belonged; eliciting a flow of speech so animated
that only afterward did one notice how dumb as any tree on Bylow Hill
he had been in regard to himself.

"They are bow and violin," said Arthur to Ruth, with his dark, unsmiling
face so free from resentment that she gratefully wondered at him, and
was presently ashamed to find herself asking her own mind if he was