Aunt Patty's Paying Guests by Eglanton Thorne

I SUPPOSE a girl is never so humble as when she knows that she has won the love of a noble-minded man, far above herself in every way. Certainly I felt very conscious of my own unworthiness on the morning that followed Alan Faulkner's return. Yet I was strangely proud too, but it was of another.

Alan found an early opportunity of saying a few words to Aunt Patty, after which she called me aside and, kissing me tenderly, said how glad she was and how she hoped I should be as happy as she had been with her dear husband. I privately hoped that I should be a great deal happier. It seemed strange to me that she should think for a moment of comparing Alan to Uncle George, with his fidgets and gout and uncertainty of temper. I forgot that he was the husband of her youth, and, presumably, had not suffered from gout when she married him.

When we had talked a little, Aunt Patty asked me if I had seen Paulina since breakfast, and I was shocked to realise that I had hardly given a thought since I rose to the trouble that overhung my friend.

"I saw her father taking her off for a walk," said Aunt Patty, "so I suppose he was going to tell her the bad news. I am glad he kept it to himself last night."

I watched anxiously for Paulina's return. Alan was busy in his room; he was going up to town in the afternoon in order to see father and mother. I turned hot and cold whenever I thought of what mother would think or say when she learned the object of his visit. Of one thing I felt certain: she could not fail to like Alan Faulkner.

I had accomplished most of my morning tasks and was watering my plants on the top of the porch, when I saw Paulina and her father enter the garden. Josiah Dicks looked a much happier man than he had appeared on the previous evening. He had lost, perhaps for ever, his air of elation and self-complacency; but apparently a load had been lifted from his heart since I last saw him. Paulina had a sober air, yet did not appear so cast down as I had expected she would be. She nodded and smiled when she caught sight of me in my observatory, and a few minutes later she was up there beside me.

"Well, Nan," she said, dropping into my chair, "poppa says you know that we have lost all our money and become paupers."

"Not quite that, I think," was my reply, and I could not help smiling at her desperate way of putting it.

"You should not smile, Nan," she said gravely; "it's an awful thing to be poor, isn't it? Every one seems to think so. Still, I suppose it might be worse. Anyway, we have money enough to keep us here till the end of the month, and then take us back to America. And we need not travel as steerage passengers, either."

"Dear Pollie, I am glad you can take it so bravely," I said: "but I knew you would."

"Well, I guess I've had a good time while the money lasted, so I won't grumble now it's gone," she remarked philosophically. "And I'll allow there may be compensations. Poppa can't expect to marry me to a prince now, anyway."

"A prince! " I repeated.

"Well, a duke, then, or some very exalted person," she said calmly. "You must know that poppa is ambitious, and as his wealth increased, so did his ideas of what would be his daughter's fitting destiny."

"And your ideas were different," I suggested, beginning to see a possible explanation of the equanimity with which Paulina was facing their misfortune.

"Just so," she replied: "with your usual sagacity you have hit the point exactly. Poppa and I could never agree with regard to my settlement in life. There were rather serious ructions before we started for Europe. As I say, he wanted me to marry a duke or some one only a few degrees lower in the social scale, and I desired no one but Charlie, and would have been content in a cottage with him."

"Charlie! " I cried. "You mentioned him once before, Pollie, and I guessed you took a deep interest in him. Do tell me who he is!"

"Charlie is my first cousin once removed," said Paulina, "and he occupies no higher position than that of clerk in the stores of a linen company at Indianapolis. But I don't care what he is-he is just Charlie."

"Oh, I understand," I said.

"Of course you do, Nan; you can't help understanding," said Paulina. "And you can easily see how this ill wind may blow me good, for now my dowry has taken to itself wings, no duke will want to make me a duchess. Charles becomes eligible, therefore my cloud has a silver lining."

"Then your father has no dislike to him personally," I said.