eleven months, and willed that I should take up my life in the house
where she had dropped hers.

"Oh, Sophy!" cried Alicia Gaines, the one person in the world who
didn't call me Miss Smith. "Oh, Sophy, it's like a fairy-story come
true! Think of falling heir to an old, old, old lady's old, old, old
house, in South Carolina! I hope there's a big old door with a
fan-light, and a Greeky front with white pillars, and a big old
hall, and a big old garden--"

"And an old stove that smokes and old windows that rattle and an old
roof that leaks, and maybe big, big old rats that squeak o' nights,"
I said darkly. For the first rapture of the astonishing news was
beginning to wear thin, and doubt was appearing in spots.

"Sophy Smith! Why, if such a wonderful, beautiful, unexpected thing
had happened to _me_--" Alicia's blue eyes misted. I have known her
since the day she was born, next door to us in Boston, and she is
the only person I have ever seen who can cry and look pretty while
she's doing it; also, she can cry and laugh at the same time, being
Irish. Some foolish people, who have been deceived by Alicia
Gaines's baby stare and complexion, have said she hasn't sense
enough to get in out of a shower of rain. This is, of course, a
libel. But what's the odds, when every male being in sight would
rush to her aid with an umbrella?

After her mother's death I fell heir to Alicia, who, like me, was an
only child, and without relatives. Lately, I'd gotten her into our
filing-department. She didn't belong in a business office, she whose
proper background should have been an adoring husband and the latest