“Fanny,” said Ellen suddenly; “I want to tell you something.”

Mrs. Wesley Elliot turned a complacently abstracted gaze upon her friend who sat beside her on the vine-shaded piazza of the parsonage. She felt the sweetest sympathy for Ellen, whenever she thought of her at all:

“Yes, dear.”

“Do you remember my speaking to you about Jim— Oh, a long time ago, and how he—? It was perfectly ridiculous, you know.”

Fanny's blue eyes became suddenly alert.

“You mean the time Jim kissed you,” she murmured. “Oh, Ellen, I've always been so sorry for—”

“Well; you needn't be,” interrupted Ellen; “I never cared a snap for Jim Dodge; so there!”

The youthful matron sighed gently: she felt that she understood poor dear Ellen perfectly, and in token thereof she patted poor dear Ellen's hand.

“I know exactly how you feel,” she warbled.

Ellen burst into a gleeful laugh:

“You think you do; but you don't,” she informed her friend, with a spice of malice. “Your case was entirely different from mine, my dear: You were perfectly crazy over Wesley Elliot; I was only in love with being in love.”

Fanny looked sweetly mystified and a trifle piqued withal.

“I wanted to have a romance—to be madly in love,” Ellen explained. “Oh, you know! Jim was merely a peg to hang it on.”

The wife of the minister smiled a lofty compassion.

“Everything seems so different after one is married,” she stated.

“Is that really so?” cried Ellen. “Well, I shall soon know, Fan, for I'm to be married in the fall.”

“Married? Why, Ellen Dix!”

“Uh—huh,” confirmed Ellen, quite satisfied with the success of her coup. “You don't know him, Fan; but he's perfectly elega............