ssed
off, but he had kept up the joke.

"O, do let that old story alone," exclaimed Mrs. Argenter. "Sylvie
will soon outgrow all that. If you want to make her a real lady,
there is nothing like letting her get thoroughly used to having
things."

"I don't intend her to get used to having a pony-chaise," Mr.
Argenter said very quietly and shortly. "If she wants to 'show a
kindness,' and take 'other' girls to ride, there's the slide-top
buggy and old Scrub. She may have that as often as she pleases."

And Mrs. Argenter knew that this ended--or had better end--the
conversation.

For that time. Sylvie Argenter did get used to having a pony-chaise,
after all. Her mother waited six months, until the pleasant summer
weather, when her friends began to come out from the city to spend
days with her, or to take early teas, and Michael had to be sent
continually to meet and leave them at the trains. Then she began
again, and asked for a pony-chaise for herself. To "save the cost of
it in Michael's time, and the wear and tear of the heavy carriages.
Those little sunset drives would be such a pleasure to her, just
when Michael had to be milking and putting up for the night." Mr.
Argenter had forgotten all about the other talk, Sylvie's name now
being not once mentioned; and the end of it was that a pretty little
low phaeton was added to the Argenter equipages, and that Sylvie's
mother was always lending it to her.

So Sylvie was driving about in it this afternoon. She had been over
to West Dorbury to see the Highfords, and was coming round by
Ingraham's Corner, to stop there and buy one of his fresh big loaves
of real brown bread for her father's tea. It was a little unspoken,
politic understanding between Sylvie and her mother, that some
small, acceptable errand like this was to be accomplished whenever
the former had the basket-phaeton of an afternoon. By quiet, unspoken
demonstration, Mr. Argenter was made to feel in his own little
comforts what a handy thing it was to have a daughter flitting about
so easily with a pony-carriage.

But there was something else to be accomplished this time that
Sylvie had not thought of, and that when it happened, she felt with
some dismay might not be quite offset and compensated for by the
Ingraham brown bread.

Rod Sherrett was out too, from Roxeter, Young-Americafying with his
tandem; trying, to-day, one of his father's horses with his own Red
Squirrel, to make out the team; for which