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Content looked at Jim, and her little face was almost terrible, so full of bewilderment and fear it was. “Jim,” whispered Content, “I can’t have big sister Solly not be here. I can’t send her away. What would she think?”

Jim stared. “Think? Why, she isn’t alive to think, anyhow!”

“I can’t make her — dead,” sobbed Content. “She came when I wanted her, and now when I don’t so much, when I’ve got Uncle Edward and Aunt Sally and you, and don’t feel so dreadful lonesome, I can’t be so bad as to make her dead.”

Jim whistled. Then his face brightened up. He looked at Content with a shrewd and cheerful grin. “See here, kid, you say your sister Solly is big, grown up, don’t you?” he inquired.

Content nodded pitifully.

“Then why, if she is grown up and pretty, don’t she have a beau?”

Content stopped sobbing and gave him a quick glance.

“Then — why doesn’t she get married, and go out West to live?”

Jim chuckled. Instead of a sob, a faint echo of his chuckle came from Content.

Jim laughed merrily. “I say, Content,” he cried, “let’s have it she’s married now, and gone?”

“Well,” said Content.

Jim put his arm around her very nicely and protectingly. “It’s all right, then,” said he, “as all right as it can be for a girl. Say, Content, ain’t it a shame you aren’t a boy?”

“I can’t help it,” said Content, meekly.

“You see,” said Jim, thoughtfully, “I don’t, as a rule, care much about girls, but if you could coast down-hill and skate, and do a few things like that, you would be almost as good as a boy.”

Content surveyed him, and her pessimistic little face assumed upward curves. “I will,” said she. “I will do anything, Jim. I will fight if you want me to, just like a boy.”

“I don’t believe you could lick any of us fellers unless you get a good deal harder in the muscles,” said Jim, eying her thoughtfully; “but we’ll play ball, and maybe by and by you can begin with Arnold Carruth.”

“Could lick him now,” said Content.

But Jim’s face sobered before her readiness. “Oh no, you mustn’t go to fighting right away,” said he. “It wouldn’t do. You really are a girl, you know, and father is rector.”

“Then I won’t,” said Content; “but I COULD knock down that little boy with curls; I know I could.”

“Well, you needn’t. I’ll like you just as well. You see, Content” — Jim’s voice faltered, for he was a boy, and on the verge of sentiment before which he was shamed — “you see, Content, now your big sister Solly is married and gone out West, why, you can have me for your brother, and of course a brother is a good deal better than a sister.”

“Yes,” said Content, eagerly.

“I am going,” said Jim, “to marry Lucy Rose when I grow up, but I haven’t got any sister, and I’d like you first rate for one. So I’ll be your big brother instead of your cousin.”

“Big brother Solly?”

“Say, Content, that is an awful name, but I don’t care. You’re only a girl. You can call me anything you want to, but you mustn’t call me Solly when there is anybody within hearing.”

“I won’t.”

“Because it wouldn’t do,” said Jim with weight.

“I never will, honest,” said Content.

Presently they went into the house. Dr. Trumbull was there; he had been talking seriously to the rector and his wife. He had come over on purpose.

“It is a perfect absurdity,” he said, “but I made ten calls this morning, and everywhere I was asked about that little Adams girl’s big sister — why you keep her hidden. They have a theory that she is either an idiot or dreadfully disfigured. I had to tell them I know nothing about it.”

“There isn’t any girl,” said the rector, wearily. “Sally, do explain.”

Dr. Trumbull listened. “I have known such cases,” he said when Sally had finished.