often busy and tired, and----" He paused as though he would have
added something, but thought better of it. "And she is much alone. A
young lively girl would rouse her and do her good, and Flurry would
be glad of you."

"I should like it very much," I returned, hesitatingly, "if it were
not for mother and Dot." Just for the moment the offer dazzled me and
blinded my common sense. Always to occupy my snug little pink
chamber; to sit with Miss Ruth in this warm, luxurious drawing-room;
to be waited on, petted, spoiled, as Miss Ruth always spoiled people.
No wonder such a prospect allured a girl of seventeen.

"Oh, they will do without you," he returned, with a man's
indifference to female argument. He and Allan were alike in the
facility with which they would knock over one's pet theories. "You
are like other young people, Miss Cameron; you think the world cannot
get on without you. When you are older you will get rid of this
idea," he continued, turning amused eyes on my youthful perplexity.
"It is only the young who think one cannot do without them," finished
this worldly-wise observer of human nature.

Somehow that stung me and put me on my mettle, and in a moment I had
arrayed the whole of my feeble forces against so arbitrary an
arrangement of my destiny.

"I cannot help what other young people think," I said, in rather a
perverse manner; "they may be wise or foolish as they like, but I am
sure of one thing, that mother and Dot cannot do without me."

I am afraid my speech was rather rude and abrupt, but Mr. Lucas did