“If you merely talk with her I don’t think that will do it,” he said, decidedly.  “She’s been with you all winter, has seen just how a girl should behave,”—­he did not know what a thrill of happiness this bluntly sincere compliment gave his hearer—­“and she hasn’t taken it in a bit.  She needs something to bring her to her senses.  I’d rather not tell you my plan, for if you can assure her afterward that you weren’t in it, you can do her more good than if she’s as provoked at you as she’s sure to be at me.  But I give you my word of honour I’ll not do a thing to frighten her, or play any fool practical jokes.  I’ll have to let Just into the secret, I think, but nobody else.  Will you trust me?”

“Of course, I will,” said the girl, quickly.  “On just one condition, Jeff.  Think of her as if she were your own sister, and don’t—­don’t——­”

“Be ‘as funny as I can’?  No, I won’t.”

Evelyn observed Lucy all that day with understanding, and found herself longing to warn the girl that her foolishness was about to meet with its punishment.  She noted with sorrow the strangely excited look in the young eyes, the light, half-hysterical laugh, the changing colour in the pretty face.  Lucy’s promise of beauty had never seemed to her so characterless, or her words so empty of sense.

She found her in a corner of their room, reading a worn novel by a certain author whose very name she had been taught to regard as a synonym for vapidity and sentimentalism of the most highly flavoured sort, and she could not keep back a quick exclamation at sight of it.  Lucy looked up with a frown and a flush.

“I suppose you think it’s terrible to read novels,” she said, pettishly flirting the leaves.  “Well, I don’t.”

“Dear, it’s not ‘novels’ that I’ve been taught to despise, but the sort of novel that writer writes.  I don’t know anything about them myself, but I saw my brother Thorne once put that one you’re reading in the stove and jam on the cover, as if he were afraid it would get out.  Do you wonder I don’t like to see Lucy Peyton reading it?” asked Evelyn gently, with her cheek against the other girl’s.

“He must be a terrible Miss Nancy, then,” said Lucy, defiantly.  “There’s not a thing in it that couldn’t be in a Sunday-school book.  The heroine is the sweetest thing.”

“If she is she won’t mind your putting her down and coming out for a walk with me,” answered Evelyn, with a smile which might have captivated Lucy if she had seen it.  But the younger girl got up and flung away out of the room, murmuring that she did not feel like walking, and would take herself and her book where they would not bother people.

Evelyn looked after her with a little sigh, and owned that Jeff might be right in thinking that mere gentle argument with Lucy would have scant effect on a head full of nonsense or a heart whose love for the sweet and true had had far too little development.