sympathy at my lorn state, over her glasses.

"I don't see how you have stood it at all," said Sallie, about to
dissolve in tears. "The love and protection and sympathy of a man are
the only things in life worth anything to a woman. Since my loss I don't
know what I would have done without Cousin James. You must come into his
kind care, Evelina."

"I must learn to endure loneliness," I answered sadly, about to begin to
gulp from force of example, and the pressure of long hereditary
influence.

I'm glad that I did not dissolve, however, before what followed
happened, for in the twinkling of two bare feet I was smothered in the
embrace of Henrietta, who in her rush brought either the Pup or the Kit,
I can't tell which yet, along to help her enfold me.

"I'll come stay with you forever, and we don't need no men! Don't
like 'em no-how!" she was exclaiming down my back, when a drawl from the
doorway made us all turn in that direction.

"Why, Henrietta, my own, can it be you who utter such cruel sentiments
in my absence?" and Polk Hayes lounged into the room, with the same
daring listlessness that he had used in trying to hold me in his arms
out on the porch the night I had said good-by to him and Glendale, four
years ago.

Henrietta's chubby little body gave a wriggle of delight, and much
sentiment beamed in her rugged, small face, as she answered him with
enthusiasm, though not stopping to couch her reply in exactly