Julie was in bed, but not asleep, when Hester came in that night, and propped herself up on her elbow to listen with absorbed interest while she gave an account of herself.

“Julie dear,” the younger girl began, “never urge me again to go anywhere where I am to be confronted by the fruit of our labor. I can’t stand it. I thought I should die when I first saw the boxes of cake piled up in the hall—of course in a way it was a relief to know they were safely there, but it gave me an actual pain to remember how we nearly killed ourselves over them. Then a man I met nearly dragged me out to see the bride cut the cake. That was too much and Mr. Landor came to the rescue.”

“How nice of him!”

“Yes,” admitted Hester, “he was nice and we were having a jolly time when that awful man pounced down upon us, bride cake in hand, and I was actually forced to eat some of it!”

“Poor child! Couldn’t you have intimated that you had tasted it just a few times before?”

“I was tempted to, but out of consideration for Mrs. Lennox I spared him the shock. And then what do you suppose? I got the gold dollar! I would not have bothered to put such a polish on it yesterday if I had known it was coming back to me!”

“Did you throw it out of the window in your best high-tragedy style?”

“No, I gave it to Mr. Landor. He looked so cross when Mr. Bemis joined us that he was absolutely funny, so I thought I’d just give him a little present—‘for a good boy on his birthday’ or something of that sort, you know, only he wasn’t so alarmingly good and it wasn’t his birthday,—at least I don’t suppose it was, do you?”

“Hester, you do talk the most idiotic nonsense!”

“Do I? Well, I’ve been pretty serious the past hour,” she said soberly as she slipped off her gown and seated herself on the edge of the bed preparatory to taking down her hair. “Julie, we are going to have war!”

To Julie, who could not be expected to know her sister’s train of thought, this announcement seemed so irrelevant that she looked at her wonderingly.

“It was not in to-night’s paper,” she said.

“No, but it is in the air. Mr. Landor thinks it is inevitable. He talked with me to-night about a friend of his who’s crazy to go. I did not suspect a thing at first but afterward I did—it’s himself, Julie—he means to volunteer with the first call for troops.”

“That is just what I should expect of him, Hester.”

“Y-e-s,” reluctantly, “but do you know from things he said it is evidently going to be a tussle for him to make up his mind to leave. He is all upset about it and oh! Julie dear, how I did wish you were there to talk to him—you always say such beautiful, helpful things. It is some one he cares about—perhaps it is his father. Do you suppose it could be any one else, Julie?”

“I don’t know, dear”—certain suspicions in regard to Landor gaining ground every minute—“perhaps it is Jessie Davis,” wickedly, for Julie could do her share of teasing too.

“That fashion plate!” scornfully. “I don’t believe a word of it! She’s not fit to button his shoes!”

“Probably she would not care to,” remarked Julie, intensely amused at this taking up of the cudgels in Landor’s behalf; and then, thinking it best—this wise Julie!—not to prolong the jest, she said, “It is probably his father. He is old, you know, and Mr. Landor may hesitate to go off and leave him. I am glad he talked with you, dear, about anything he had so much at heart, for it shows how much he appreciates and values your opinion and you probably talked to him twice as well as I could, you funny little baby owl!”

Hester’s reply to this was to fling herself down on the foot of the bed and cry in a muffled tone, “I’m so tired—so dead tired! I didn’t realize it until I kept so still coming home and then I ached so I wanted to scream while Mr. Landor was talking to me!”

Julie’s arms were around her in a moment. “The strain has been too much, dear. You cannot stand the work and play too,—it is no use trying.”

“But I like to play,” cried Hester rebelliously, “and sometimes I feel so wicked—as if I couldn’t keep up my end another minute, and then I want to run away—all of us run away—to have ‘The Hustle’ again and go racing out of all this, and then,”—her voice broke,—“Oh! then Julie darling, I am so ashamed of such thoughts—so humiliated to think I can’t be as patient as you are!”

“I know, dear,” stroking her sister’s hair softly, “and I am not patient—not half as patient as I try to be—only I hold myself with a fearfully tight rein for fear I’ll go all to pieces. We are both pretty much knocked out now, dear, with the strain of the winter, the newness of things and—”

“Not to mention being half fed,” inserted Hester.

“But we have paid all our expenses as we’ve gone along and kept out of debt even if we have half starved to do it. You see, dear, up to now,” said Julie, the accountant, “we have had to put such a large amount of our earnings back into the business for all sorts of things.”

“Imagine what cousin Nancy would say if she knew how we wriggled along on almost nothing, you and I!”

“She’d say we were fools not to have accounts with the butcher, the baker and candlestick-maker but we do not agree with her, and Daddy, bless his heart! does not want for anything. Thank heaven, we’ve accomplished that much! Isn’t it a mercy, dear, that he does not realize things? It would break his heart!”

“Oh! yes, but how I do long to have our darling old Daddy back!”

Julie said nothing. Her chin was very rigid but in a few moments she said cheerfully, “I think the spring promises a good deal. Our work increases every day and we can soon begin to live better. Bridget says marketing is much cheaper in the summer, and if we only make enough now to carry Daddy comfortably through the dull season when people are away and we are not earning much, we’ll get on famously. Just think what magnificent times we’ll have this summer just loafing around Daddy’s room!”

Hester, who seldom allowed herself such luxury of woe as she had just been indulging in, sat up, wiped her eyes on the corner of the sheet and said emphatically, “I’m a fiend and I ought to be cow-hided!”

“I’ll paddle you instead,” said Julie, picking up the hair-brush Hester had dropped and making as if to apply the back of it vigorously.

Hester dodged but Julie caught her and, springing out of bed, planted her firmly in a chair and said, “I’ll brush that crazy head of yours and help you to bed or you’ll never get there! It must be all hours of the night.”

“You’ll catch your death of cold,” remonstrated Hester.

“I won’t, and if you’ll keep as still as a mouse and not scream when I comb your hair—”

“You pull like the dickens; you know you do!”

“I do not and I wish you’d stop talking and give me a chance. I declare you get worse every day—I tremble to think what you’re coming to!—and I’ve, oh! such a piece of news to tell you!”

She was wholly unprepared for the clutch of Hester’s arms about her neck as she cried, “Don’t tell me to-night, Julie dear, I—I know—all—about—it!”

“Do you?” holding her fast. “Then aren’t you glad it has all come out this way?”

“Yes, Julie darling,” stifling a sob.

“Why, Hester, what is it? You must not cry, dear. I can’t think what is the matter!”

“I’m a selfish brute, but oh, I’m not really, Julie—not really. I think it is the most beautiful thing!”

“What is ‘the most beautiful thing’?” wondering if the child were losing her mind.

“That he’s been here. I knew it the moment you spoke. As if he’d fail to come!”

“Hester! do you mean you think that I—I—”

Hester nodded.

“But I don’t dear, not the least little bit in the world!”

“Oh, Julie!”

For a moment they clung together. Then Julie gave a hysterical laugh.

“What a silly old goose you were to go having absurd thoughts about me, and how dared you, how dared you think I was in love with any one?”

“I did not know,” penitently, “you kept so still about Monsieur GrÉmond and he was in love with you, wasn’t he?”

“Yes dear. He came this afternoon and I sent him away. We do not want to have secrets from each other, do we, old girl, but I never talked to you much about him because there was a time when I did not quite know whether I cared for him or not. Perhaps back in the old days, if he had asked me, I might have said yes, but I doubt it—it was more a sort of fascination he exercised over me for awhile and now I am truly thankful he has come and gone. He has removed every particle of doubt as to my attitude toward him.”

“Oh, I am so glad. I couldn’t bear the thought of his carrying you off to France.”

Julie’s eyes opened wide. “Did you suppose I’d go away and leave you and Daddy and the rest?” in a tone of astonishment.

“Some Prince Charming is coming along to carry you off some day, Julie dear,” said Hester, who could bring herself to regard such an event with some degree of complacency now that it was not an immediate fact. “I’m not quite such a selfish pig” (she never spared herself in the matter of epithets), “as to expect to have you always.”

“I think we are sufficient unto each other now, dear,” said Julie seriously, “and we may always be, for all the years to come; but if some day our lives should change—a new interest enter in—we’ll share it and make it beautify the lives of both of us just as we’ve always shared every joy and sorrow ever since we were babies.” She kissed her sister solemnly.

“You blessed Julie!” was the response.

When the gas was out and Hester, the irrepressible, finally in bed, the light of the full moon came streaming into the little room. And lingering with a caressing touch it fell upon a white pillow on which a curly golden head and a sleek dark one lay pressed close together. In the solemn stillness the breathing of two slender forms told that the excitement of the past forty-eight hours had at last ended in much needed sleep.