ve it?--she actually thought he was
rather nice.

"I acted like an ass," said Mr. Woods, tragically. "Oh, yes, I did,
you know. But if you'll forgive me for having been an ass I'll forgive
you for throwing me over for Teddy Anstruther, and at the wedding I'll
dance through any number of pairs of patent-leathers you choose to
mention."

So that was the way he looked at it. Teddy Anstruther, indeed! Why,
Teddy was a dark little man with brown eyes--just the sort of man she
most objected to. How could any one ever possibly fancy a brown-eyed
man? Then, for no apparent reason, Margaret flushed, and Billy, who
had stretched his great length of limb on the grass beside her, noted
it with a pair of the bluest eyes in the world and thought it vastly
becoming.

"Billy," said she, impulsively--and the name having slipped out once
by accident, it would have been absurd to call him anything else
afterward--"it was horrid of you to refuse to take any of that money."

"But I didn't want it," he protested. "Good Lord, I'd only have done
something foolish with it. It was awfully square of you, Peggy, to
offer to divide, but I didn't want it, you see. I don't want to be a
millionaire, and give up the rest of my life to founding libraries and
explaining to people that if they never spend any money on amusements
they'll have a great deal by the time they're too old to enjoy it. I'd
rather paint pictures."

So that I think Margaret must have endeavoured at some time to make
him accept part of Frederick R. Woods's money.

"You make me feel--and look--like a thief," she reproved him.

Then Billy laughed a little. "You don't look in the least like one,"
he reassured her. "You look like an uncommonly honest, straightforward
young woman," Mr. Woods added, handsomely, "and I don't believe you'd
purloin under the severest temptation."

She thanked him for his testimonial, with all three dimples in
evidence.

This was unsettling. He hedged.

"Except, perhaps--" said he.

"Yes?" queried Margaret, after a pause.

However, she questioned him with her head drooped forward, her brows
raised; and as this gave him the full effect of her eyes, Mr. Woods
became quite certain that there was, at least, one thing she might be
expected to rob him of, and wisely declined to mention it.

Margaret did not insist on knowing what it was. Perhaps she heard it
thumping under his waistcoat, where it was behaving very queerly.

So they sat in silence