id="page_032"/> seen—if I could be sure of always coming back here.”

“Ah, yes, if one could be sure of that.”

“I shall always live here, Gavan,” said Eppie, feeling the skepticism of his “if.”

“Well, that may be so,” he returned, with the manner that made her realize so keenly the difference that was more than a matter of four years.

She insisted now: “I shall live here until I am grown up. Then I shall travel everywhere, all over the world—India, Japan, America; then I shall marry and come back here to live and have twelve children. I don’t believe you care for children as I do, Gavan. How they would enjoy themselves here, twelve of them all together—six boys and six girls.”

Gavan laughed. “Well, I hope all that will come true,” he assented. “Why twelve?”

“I don’t know; but I’ve always thought of there being twelve. I would like as many as possible, and one could hardly remember the names of more. I don’t believe that there are more than twelve names that I care for. But with twelve we should have a birthday-party once a month, one for each month. Did you have birthday-cakes in India, Gavan, with candles for your age?”

“Yes; my mother always had a cake for my birthday.” His voice, in speaking of his mother, seemed always to steel itself, as though to speak of her hurt him. Eppie had felt this directly, and now, regretting her allusion, said, “When is your birthday, Gavan?” thinking of a cake with fifteen candles—how splendid!—to hear disappointingly that the day was not till January, when he would have been gone—long since.

On another time, as they walked up the hillside, beside the burn, she said: “I thought you were not going to like us at all, when you first came.”

“I was horribly afraid of you all,” said Gavan. “Everything was so strange to me.”

“No, you weren’t afraid,” Eppie objected—“not really afraid. I don’t believe you are ever really afraid of people.”

“Yes, I am—afraid of displeasing them, trying them in some way. And I was miserable on that day, too, with anxiety about my poor monkey. I’m sorry I seemed horrid.”

“Not a bit horrid, only very cold and polite.”

“I didn’t realize things much. You see—“ Gavan paused.

“Yes, of course; you weren’t thinking of us. You were thinking of—what you had left.”

“Yes,” he assented, not looking at her.

He went on presently, turning his eyes on her and smiling over a sort of alarm at his own advance to personalities: “You weren’t horrid. I remember that I thought you the nicest little girl I had ever seen. You were all that I did see—standing there in the sun, with a white dress like Alice in Wonderland and with your hair all shining. I never saw hair like it.”

“Do you think it pretty?” Eppie asked eagerly.

“Very—all those rivers of gold in the dark.”

“I am glad. I think it pretty, too, and nurse is afraid that I am vain, I think, for she always takes great pains to tell me that it is striped hair and that she hopes it may grow to be the same color when I’m older.”

“I hope not,” said Gavan, gallantly.

Many long afternoons were spent in the garden, where Eppie initiated him into the sanctities of the summer-house. Gavan’s sense of other people’s sanctities was wonderful. She would never have dreamed of showing her dolls to her cousins; but she brought them out and displayed them to Gavan, and he looked at them and their appurtenances carefully, gravely assenting to all the characteristics that she pointed out. So kind, indeed, so comprehending was he, that Eppie, a delightful project dawning in her mind, asked: “Have you ever played with dolls? I mean when you were very little?”

“No, never.”

“I’ve always had to play by myself,” said Eppie, “and it’s rather dull sometimes, having to carry on all the conversations alone.” And with a rush she brought out, rather aghast at her own hardihood, “I suppose you couldn’t think of playing with me?”

Gavan, at this, showed something of the bashful air of a young bachelor asked to hold a baby, but in a moment he said, “I shouldn’t mind at all, though I’m afraid I shall be stupid at it.”

Eppie flushed, incredulous of such good fortune, and almost reluctant to accept it. “You really don’t mind, Gavan? Boys hate dolls, as a rule, you know.”

“I don’t mind in the least,” he laughed. “I am sure I shall enjoy it. How do we begin? You must teach me.”

“I’ll teach you everything. You are the very kindest person I ever knew, Gavan. Really, I wouldn’t ask you to if I didn’t believe you would like it when once you had tried it. It is such fun. And now we can make them do all sorts of things, have all sorts of adventures, that they never could have before.” She suspected purest generosity, but so trusted in the enchantments he was to discover that she felt herself justified in profiting by it. She placed in his hand Agnes, the fairest of all the dolls, golden-haired, blue-eyed. Agnes was good, and her own daughter, Elspeth, named after herself, was bad. “As bad as possible,” said Eppie. “I have to whip her a great deal.”

Gavan, holding his charge rather helplessly and looking at Elspeth, a doll of sturdier build, with short hair, dark eyes, and, for a doll, a mutinous face, remarked, with his touch of humor, “I thought you didn’t approve of whipping.”

“I don’t,—not real children, or dolls either, except when they are really bad. Mr. MacNab whips his all the time, and they are not a bit bad, really, as Elspeth is.” And Elspeth proceeded to demonstrate how really bad she was by falling upon Agnes with such malicious kicks and blows that Gavan, in defense of his own doll, dealt her a vigorous slap.

“Well done, Mr. Palairet; she richly deserves it! Come here directly, you naughty child,” and after a scuffling flight around the summer-house, Elspeth was secured, and so soundly beaten that Gavan at last interceded for her with the ruthless mother.

“Not until she says that she is sorry.”

“Oh, Elspeth, say that you are sorry,” Gavan supplicated, while he laughed. “Really, Eppie, you are savage. I feel as if you were really hurting some one. Please forgive her now; Agnes has, I am sure.”

“I hurt her because I love her and want her to be a good child. She will come to no good end when she grows up if she cannot learn to control her temper. What is it I hear you say, Elspeth?”

Elspeth, in a low, sullen voice that did not augur well for permanent amendment, whispered that she was sorry, and was led up, crestfallen, to beg Agnes’s pardon and to receive a reconciling kiss.

The table was then brought out and laid. Eppie had her small store of biscuits and raisins, and Elspeth and Agnes were sent into the garden to pick currants and flowers. To Agnes was given the task of making a nosegay for the place of each guest. There were four of these guests, bidden to the feast with great ceremony: three, pink and curly, of little individuality, and the fourth a dingy, armless old rag-doll, reverently wrapped in a fine shawl, and with a pathetic, half-obliterated face.

“Very old and almost deaf,” Eppie whispered to Gavan. “Everybody loves her. She lost her arms in a great fire, saving a baby’s life.”

Gavan was entering into all the phases of the game with such spirit, keeping up Agnes’s character for an irritating perfection so aptly that Eppie forgot to wonder if his enjoyment were as real as her own. But suddenly the doorway was darkened, and glancing up, she saw her uncle’s face, long-drawn with jocular incredulity, looking in upon them. Then, and only then, under the eyes of an uncomprehending sex, did the true caliber of Gavan’s self-immolation flash