“If I need any help to carry out a plan I have, will you give it to me, or will I have to go to totle strangers?”

“Good gracious, Bab!” he exclaimed.  “Come to me, of course.”

“And you’ll do what you’re told?”

He looked out into the hall to see if mother was near.  Then, dear Dairy, he turned to me and said: 

“I always have, Bab.  I guess I’ll run true to form.”

January 23rd.  Much better today.  Out and around.  Familey (mother and Sis) very dignafied and nothing much to say.  Evadently have promised father to restrain themselves.  Father rushed and not coming home to dinner.

Beresford on edge of proposeing.  Sis very jumpy.

Later:  Jane Raleigh is home for her couzin’s wedding!  Is coming over.  We shall take a walk, as I have much to tell her.

6 P. M. What an afternoon!  How shall I write it?  This is a Milestone in my Life.

I have met him at last.  Nay, more.  I have been in his dressing room, conversing as though acustomed to such things all my life.  I have conceled under the mattress a real photograph of him, beneath which he has written, “Yours always, Adrian Egleston.”

I am writing in bed, as the room is chilley—­or I am—­and by putting out my hand I can touch His pictured likeness.

Jane came around for me this afternoon, and mother consented to a walk.  I did not have a chance to take Sis’s pink hat, as she keeps her door locked now when not in her room.  Which is rediculous, because I am not her tipe, and her things do not suit me very well anyhow.  And I have never borowed anything but gloves and handkercheifs, except Maidie’s dress and the hat.

She had, however, not locked her bathroom, and finding a bunch of violets in the washbowl I put them on.  It does not hurt violets to wear them, and anyhow I knew Carter Brooks had sent them and she ought to wear only Beresford’s flowers if she means to marry him.

Jane at once remarked that I looked changed.

“Naturaly,” I said, in a Blase maner.

“If I didn’t know you, Bab,” she observed, “I would say that you are rouged.”

I became very stiff and distant at that.  For Jane, although my best friend, had no right to be suspicous of me.

“How do I look changed?” I demanded.

“I don’t know.  You—­Bab, I beleive you are up to some mischeif!”

“Mischeif?”

“You don’t need to pretend to me,” she went on, looking into my very soul.  “I have eyes.  You’re not decked out this way for me.”

I had meant to tell her nothing, but spying just then a man ahead who walked like Adrian, I was startled.  I cluched her arm and closed my eyes.

“Bab!” she said.

The man turned, and I saw it was not he.  I breathed again.  But Jane was watching me, and I spoke out of an overflowing Heart.

“For a moment I thought—­Jane, I have met the one at last.”