1
MISSY
by DANA GATLIN
TO VIOLA ROSEBORO'
CONTENTS
I THE FLAME DIVINE
II "YOUR TRUE FRIEND, MELISSA M"
III LIKE A SINGING BIRD
IV MISSY TACKLES ROMANCE
V IN THE MANNER OF THE DUCHESS
VI INFLUENCING ARTHUR
VII BUSINESS OF BLUSHING
VIII A HAPPY DOWNFALL
IX DOBSON SAVES THE DAY
CHAPTER I
THE FLAME DIVINE
Melissa came home from Sunday-school with a feeling she had never had before. To be sure she was frequently discovering, these days, feelings she had never had before. That was the marvellous reward of having grown to be so old; she was ten, now, an advanced age--almost grown up! She could look back, across the eons which separated her from seven-years-old, and dimly re-vision, as a stranger, the little girl who cried her first day in the Primary Grade. How absurd seemed that bashful, timid, ignorant little silly! She knew nothing at all. She still thought there was a Santa Claus!--would you believe that? And, even at eight, she had lingering fancies of fairies dancing on the flower-beds by moonlight, and talking in some mysterious language with the flowers!
Now she was much wiser. She knew that fairies lived only in books and pictures; that flowers could not actually converse. Well. . . she almost knew. Sometimes, when she was all alone--out in the summerhouse on a drowsy afternoon, or in the glimmering twilight when that one very bright and knowing star peered in at her, solitary, on the side porch, or when, later, the moonshine stole through the window and onto her pillow, so thick and white she could almost feel it with h