r the old in
heart, and certainly Mrs. Jenks was as young as any one at the party.

"I can't help dreading you, nice and amiable as you look," said Nancy
candidly to Tom Hamilton; "I am so afraid you'll fall in love with the
Yellow House and want it back again. Are you engaged to be married to a
little-footed China doll, or anything like that?" she asked with a
teasing, upward look and a disarming smile that robbed the question of
any rudeness.

"No, not engaged to anything or anybody, but I've a notion I shall be,
soon, if all goes well! I'm getting along in years now!"

"I might have known it!" sighed Nancy. "It was a prophetic instinct, my
calling you the Yellow Peril."

"It isn't a bit nice of you to dislike me before you know me; I didn't
do that way with you!"

"What do you mean?"

"Why, in the first letter you ever wrote father you sent your love to
any of his children that should happen to be of the right size. I
chanced to be _just_ the right size, so I accepted it, gratefully; I've
got it here with me to-night; no, I left it in my other coat," he said
merrily, making a fictitious search through his pockets.

Nancy laughed at his nonsense; she could not help it.

"Will you promise to get over your foolish and wicked prejudices if I on
my part promise never to take the Yellow House away from you unless you
wish?" continued Tom.

"Willingly," exclaimed Nancy joyously. "That's the safest promise I
could make, for I would never give up living in it unless I had to.
First it was father's choice, then it was mother's, now all of us seem
to have built ourselves into it, as it were. I am almost afraid to care
so much about anything, and I shall be so relieved if you do not turn
out to be really a Yellow Peril after all!"

"You are much more of a Yellow Peril yourself!" said Tom, "with that
dress and that ribbon in your hair! Will you dance the next dance with
me, please?"

"It's The Tempest; do you know it?"

"No, but I'm not so old but I may learn. I'll form myself on that
wonderful person who makes jokes about the Admiral and plays
the fiddle."

"That's Ossian Popham, principal prop of the House of Carey!"

"Lucky dog! Have you got all the props you need?"

Nancy's hand was not old or strong or experienced enough to keep this
strange young man in order, and just as she was meditating some
blighting retort he went on:--

"Who is that altogether adorable, that unspeakably beautiful lady in
black?-