n him. "I was in fairyland to-day. If
I hadn't been there, I shouldn't be here." She could answer her own late
question now, with practical certainty. She _was_ going to like men
better than women! Her mother, of course, would be an exception.

VI

It was a delicious little supper that Mrs. West had ordered in
Somerled's honour, yet for some mysterious reason, thoroughly understood
only by Aline, nobody did justice to it or enjoyed it much. Perhaps
there was thunder in the air, which upset the nerves of every one, even
the nerves of Moore, who spilt _bouillon_ on Miss MacDonald's sleeve.
This was the explanation which occurred to Basil; and certain it was
that the sky had suddenly clouded over, hiding all the stars.

"I do hope we're not going to have rain for our trip," he remarked, more
for the sake of something to say than because, even if rain came, it
were likely to last. "It's just the ticklish time of the month for
weather, you know: to-morrow we shall have the new moon."

"The heather moon!" Barrie said softly, looking out of the open window
at the purple night, purple as heather.

"What do you mean by a heather moon?" asked Basil, interested. "It
sounds sweeter than honeymoon."

"It's the sweetest moon of the year," the girl answered. "The moon when
all the most beautiful things ought to happen to the people who are
worthy of them--and the honeymoon can't come till afterward. I've always
wanted something romantic to happen to me in the heather moon; yet
nothing ever has, so far. It couldn't, at Grandma's!"

"But you haven't explained the heather moon," Basil reminded her.

"Don't you _really_ know?" She opened her eyes very wide as she smiled
at him in a friendly, childlike way; and Basil and Somerled forgot that
there was a Mrs. West in the room. It was a momentary lapse of memory,
but Aline felt it electrically. She was enraged at Basil, and disgusted
with Barrie, though merely grieved with Somerled.

"_There's_ a minx for you!" thought Moore, who was plain, and had been
chosen by Mrs. Keeling because her teeth stuck out more than the lady's
own.

"Wait! I believe, as a good Scotsman, I can guess," said Somerled. "The
heather moon's the moon of August, the moon when the heather's in its
prime of bloom."

"Yes!" cried Barrie, joyous that it should be he, her first friend, the
friend of her mother, who had solved the puzzle. "That's it: and it's
the moon for falling in love. That's why the