so pleasant, I don't know what to do," said Lucy with softening eyes.
Minnie looked at her curiously.

"I say, don't you have any good times at your home, Lucy?" she asked
soberly.

"Sometimes--not very often," answered Lucy reluctantly.

"I don't think your aunt is a very nice woman anyway," said Minnie
with her usual candour. "She looked at me so one day in church,
'cause I laughed right out at a funny little dog with a stumpy tail
running in and right up to Mr. Goldthwaite. Wouldn't you have laughed
too?"

"I don't know," said Lucy; "if it was very funny, I daresay I would."

"How pretty you are," said Minnie after a while; "my sister Alice
says so--I guess she knows." Lucy blushed, not being accustomed to
such plain speaking. "I think Miss Goldthwaite perfectly elegant,"
went on the young critic. "She is going to marry my brother George,
do you know?"

"Is she?" asked Lucy, much interested.

"Yes; and papa and mamma are crazed about her. Everybody is. Isn't
she just splendid?"

"There is nobody like her," answered Lucy. Minnie could never know
what she had been and was to her.