hers away, one end unsucked. There was this boy in the party,—Harleston Bowdoin,—so she made a favor of it and gave it to him.
They were playing on the rail of the steamboat, and Jamie was sitting respectfully apart inside. The little Bowdoin girls were sucking at their candy contentedly; Mercedes was climbing with the Bowdoin boy upon the rail, and he called his cousin Dolly to join them.
"I can't; the sun would make my hands so brown if I took off my gloves," said that young lady. "Besides, it's so common, playing with the passengers."
There was a double sting in this; for Mercedes was not just "a passenger," but of their party. She walked into the cabin with what dignity she could maintain, and then burst out weeping angrily in Jamie's arms. That is, he sought to comfort her; but she pressed him aside rudely. "Oh, Jamie," she sobbed (she was suffered to call him Jamie), "why didn't you give me gloves?"
Poor Jamie scratched his head. He had not thought of them; and that was all. He tried to caress the child, with a clumsy tender-
