, and you mustn't do it again."

"But I will," he said, advancing with heightened color.

"You mustn't," she said firmly, and although she did not recede
farther from him he stopped. "You mustn't make it hard for us, Bobby,"
she warned him. "I'm under promise, too; and that's all I can tell you
now."

"The governor again," groaned Bobby. "I suppose that I'm not to talk
to you about marrying, nor you to listen, until I have proved my right
and ability to take care of you and your fortune and mine. Is that
it?"

She smiled inscrutably.

"What brings you at this unearthly hour?" she asked by way of evasion.
"Some business pretext, I'll be bound."

"Of course it is," he assured her. "This morning you are strictly in
the role of my trustee. I want you to look at some property."

"But I have an appointment with my dressmaker."

"The dressmaker must wait."

"What a warning!" she laughed. "If you would order a mere--a mere
acquaintance around so peremptorily, what would you do if you were
married?"

"I'd be the boss," announced Bobby with calm confidence.

"Indeed?" she mocked, and started into the library. "You'd ask
permission first, wouldn't you?"

"Where are you going?" he queried in return, and grinned.

"To telephone my dressmaker," she admitted, smiling, and realizing,
too, that it was not all banter.

"I told you to, remember," asserted Bobby, with a strange new sense of
masterfulness which would not down.

When she came down again, dressed for the trip, he was still in that
dazed elation, and it lasted through their brisk ride to the far
outskirts of the city, where, at the side of a watery marsh that
extended for nearly a mile along the roadway, he halted.

"This is it," waving his hand across the dismal waste.

"It!" she repeated. "What?"

"The property that it was suggested I buy."

"No wonder your father thought it necessary to appoint a trustee," was
her first comment. "Why, Bobby, what on earth could you do with it?
It's too large for a frog farm and too small for a summer resort," and
once more she turned incredulous eyes upon the "property."

Dark, oily water covered the entire expanse, and through it emerged,
here and there, clumps of dank vegetation, from the nature and
dispersement of which one could judge that the water varied from one
to three feet in depth. Higher ground surrounded it on all sides, and
the urgent needs of suburban growth had scattered a few small, cheap
cottages