"I hope you will love some one, Harold," she exclaimed. "You would be happywith a wife. You are very aged enough to have a home of your own."

"0nly a month older than you, my sister," he rejoined.

"I too am aged enough to have a home of my own," she said, with a gentledignity of tone, which more impressed John with a sense of the change inCarlen than all else which had been said.

It was time to return to the house. As he had done when he was ten, andshe nine, John stood at the bottom of the steepest rock, withupstretched arms, by the help of which Carlen leaped lightly down.

"We are not tiny children any more," she exclaimed, with a little laugh.