w much she would
suffer," he suggested, with sparkling eyes. "Suppose we should drive in
there and tell her we'd bought it!"

Mr. Kendrick turned to the figure in white at his side. The eyes of the
old man and the young woman met with understanding, and the two smiled
affectionately before the meeting was over. Richard looked on
approvingly. But he complained.

"I'd like one like that, myself," said he. "Robin has looked at me only
three times this morning, and once was when we met, for purposes of
identification!"

He had a glance of his own, then, and apparently it went to his head,
for he became more animated than ever in calling the party's attention
to each piece, of property passed by.

"These are all modern," he commented presently. "There's something about
your really old house that can't be copied. Your own home, Robin--that's
the type of antique beauty that's come to seem to me more desirable than
any other. Isn't there one along here somewhere that reminds one of it?"

"There's the General Armitage place," Roberta said. "That must be close
by, now. It used to be far out in the country. It was built by the same
architect who built ours. General Armitage and my great-grandfather were
intimate friends--they were in the Civil War together."

"Here it is." Ruth pointed it out eagerly. "I always like to go by it,
because it looks quite a little like ours, only the grounds are much
larger, and it has a wonderful old garden behind it. Mother has often
said she wished she could transplant the Armitage garden bodily, now
that the house has been closed so long. She says the old gardener is
still here, and looks after the garden--or his grandsons do."

"Shall we drive in and see it?" proposed Richard. "A garden like that
ought to have some one to admire it now and then."

He gave the order, and the car rolled in through the old stone gateway.
The place, though of a noble old type, was far from a pretentious one,
and there was no lodge at the gate, as with most of its neighbours. The
house was no larger than the comfortable home of the Gray family, but
its closed blinds and empty white-pillared portico gave it a deserted
air. The grounds about it were not indicative of present day, fastidious
landscape gardening, but suggested an old-time country gentleman's
estate, sufficiently kept up to prevent wild and alien growth, though
needing the supervision of an interested owner to suggest beneficial
changes here and t