She was very thoughtful all that afternoon, however, and so quiet that when school was over and the two girls stood on the steps of Mrs. Elder's Select Establishment, Nellie inquired anxiously if her friend were ill. "Ill!" repeated Winnie with a light laugh; "not I--only, I've been a-thinking," and a long-drawn sigh accompanied the words. "What about?" asked her companion, descending the steps and viewing the little figure with the great, serious look on its face. "What a doleful expression, Winnie! You look as if you had, like Atlas, the whole world on your shoulders." "Nellie," interrupted the child--for indeed she seemed little more than such--with the faintest quiver in her voice, "did you ever think, and think, and think, till your head seemed bursting, and all your thoughts got whirled together? No? Ah, well, I have; and somehow when I get into these moods everything becomes muddled, and I find myself all in a maze. Oh!" and Winnie spoke with passionate vehemence, "often I would give I don't know how much to find some one who could understand and explain away my thoughts." "Why not speak to your mother?" asked Nellie, rather surprised at this new phase in her friend's character; "surely she should be able to help you." But the little girl shook her head despondingly. "No, no, Nellie; my stepmother is very kind and pretty, but I don't see much of her, and she would only laugh at me." They were strolling leisurely along the street now, and the child's voice had a plaintive ring in it as she continued: "I was very ill about a year ago--so ill, Nellie, that I had to lie in bed day after day for a long time. I can't tell what was wrong