Miss Polly Harrington entered her kitchen a little hurriedly this June morning. Miss Polly did not usually make hurried movements; she specially prided herself on her repose of manner. But to-day she was hurrying-actually hurrying. Nancy, washing dishes at the sink, looked up in surprise. Nancy had been working in Miss Polly's kitchen only two months, but already she knew that her mistress did not usually hurry.

Della Wetherby tripped up the somewhat imposing steps of her sister's Commonwealth Avenue home and pressed an energetic finger against the electric-bell button. From the tip of her wing-trimmed hat to the toe of her low-heeled shoe she radiated health, capability, and alert decision. Even her voice, as she greeted the maid that opened the door, vibrated with the joy of living. "Good morning, Mary. Is my sister in?" "Y-yes, ma'am, Mrs. Carew is in," hesitated the girl; "but-she gave orders she'd see no one." "Did she? Well, I'm no one," smiled Miss Wetherby, "so she'll see me. Don't worry-I'll take the blame," she nodded, in answer to the frightened remonstrance in the girl's eyes. "Where is she-in her sitting-room?" "Y-yes, ma'am; but-that is, she said-" Miss Wetherby, however, was already halfway up the broad stairway; and, with a despairing backward glance, the maid turned away.

There was a thoughtful frown on the face of the man who was the possessor of twenty million dollars. He was a tall, spare man, with a fringe of reddish-brown hair encircling a bald spot. His blue eyes, fixed just now in a steady gaze upon a row of ponderous law books across the room, were friendly and benevolent in direct contradiction to the bulldog, never-let-go fighting qualities of the square jaw below the firm, rather thin lips. The lawyer, a youthfully alert man of sixty years, trimly gray as to garb, hair, and mustache, sat idly watching him, yet with eyes that looked so intently that they seemed to listen. For fully five minutes the two men had been pulling at their cigars in silence when the millionaire spoke. "Ned, what am I going to do with my money?" Into the lawyer's listening eyes flashed, for a moment, the keenly scrutinizing glance usually reserved for the witness on the other side. Then quietly came the answer. "Spend it yourself, I hope-for some years to come, Stanley."

Calderwell had met Mr. M. J. Arkwright in London through a common friend; since then they had tramped half over Europe together in a comradeship that was as delightful as it was unusual. As Calderwell put it in a letter to his sister, Belle: ''We smoke the same cigar and drink the same tea (he's just as much of an old woman on that subject as I am ), and we agree beautifully on all necessary points of living, from tipping to late sleeping in the morning; while as for politics and religion-we disagree in those just enough to lend spice to an otherwise tame existence.'' Farther along in this same letter Calderwell touched upon his new friend again.

''I, Bertram, take thee, Billy, '' chanted the white-robed clergyman. '''I, Bertram, take thee, Billy, ' ''echoed the tall young ridegroom, his eyes gravely tender. ''To my wedded wife.'' '''To my wedded wife.''' The bridegroom's voice shook a little. ''To have and to hold from this day forward.'' ''To have and to hold from this day forward.'' Now the young voice rang with triumph. It had grown strong and steady. ''For better for worse.'' ''For better for worse.'' ''For richer for poorer, '' droned the clergyman, with the weariness of uncounted repetitions.

Father calls me Mary. Mother calls me Marie. Everybody else calls me Mary Marie. The rest of my name is Anderson. I'm thirteen years old, and I'm a cross-current and a contradiction. That is, Sarah says I'm that. (Sarah is my old nurse.) She says she read it once-that the children of unlikes were always a cross-current and a contradiction. And my father and mother are unlikes, and I'm the children. That is, I'm the child. I'm all there is. And now I'm going to be a bigger cross-current and contradiction than ever, for I'm going to live half the time with Mother and the other half with Father. Mother will go to Boston to live, and Father will stay here-a divorce, you know. I'm terribly excited over it. None of the other girls have got a divorce in their families, and I always did like to be different. Besides, it ought to be awfully interesting, more so than just living along, common, with your father and mother in the same house all the time-especially if it's been anything like my house with my father and mother in it

Miss Polly Harrington entered her kitchen a little hurriedly this June morning. Miss Polly did not usually make hurried movements; she specially prided herself on her repose of manner. But to-day she was hurrying-actually hurrying. Nancy, washing dishes at the sink, looked up in surprise. Nancy had been working in Miss Polly's kitchen only two months, but already she knew that her mistress did not usually hurry.

Far up on the mountain-side stood alone in the clearing. It was roughly yet warmly built. Behind it jagged cliffs broke the north wind, and towered gray-white in the sunshine. Before it a tiny expanse of green sloped gently away to a point where the mountain dropped in another sharp descent, wooded with scrubby firs and pines. At the left a footpath led into the cool depths of the forest. But at the right the mountain fell away again and disclosed to view the picture David loved the best of all: the far-reaching valley; the silver pool of the lake with its ribbon of a river flung far out; and above it the grays and greens and purples of the mountains that climbed one upon another's shoulders until the topmost thrust their heads into the wide dome of the sky itself. There was no road, apparently, leading away from the cabin. There was only the footpath that disappeared into the forest. Neither, anywhere, was there a house in sight nearer than the white specks far down in the valley by the river.

Billy Neilson was eighteen years old when the aunt, who had brought her up from babyhood, died. Miss Benton's death left Billy quite alone in the world-alone, and peculiarly forlorn. To Mr. James Harding, of Harding & Harding, who had charge of Billy's not inconsiderable property, the girl poured out her heart in all its loneliness two days after the funeral.

It was on his fourteenth birthday that Keith Burton discovered the Great Terror, though he did not know it by that name until some days afterward. He knew only, to his surprise and distress, that the "Treasure Island," given to him by his father for a birthday present, was printed in type so blurred and poor that he could scarcely read it. He said nothing, of course. In fact he shut the book very hastily, with a quick, sidewise look, lest his father should see and notice the imperfection of his gift. Poor father He would feel so bad after he had taken all that pains and spent all that money-and for something not absolutely necessary, too And then to get cheated like that. For, of course, he had been cheated-such horrid print that nobody could read. But it was only a day or two later that Keith found some more horrid print. This time it was in his father's weekly journal that came every Saturday morning. He found it again that night in a magazine, and yet again the next day in the Sunday newspaper.