boy, he should have remonstrated. There are
several ways--"

"Thanks," said Penhallow. "Of course, Ann, the playing with Tom will end.
I fancy there is no need to interfere."

"He should be punished for rudeness to Leila," said Mrs. Penhallow.

"Oh, well, he's a rough lad and like enough sorry. How can I punish him
without making too much of a row."

"You are quite right, as I see it," said Rivers. "Let it drop; but,
indeed, it is true that Leila should have other than rough lads as
school-companions."

"Oh, Lord! Rivers."

"I am glad to agree with you at least about one thing," said Mrs.
Penhallow. "In September John will be sixteen, and Leila a year or so
younger. She is now simply a big, daring, strong boy."

"If you think that, Ann, you are oddly mistaken."

"I am," she said; "I was. It was only one end of my reasons why she must
go to school. Before John came and when we had cousins here--girls, she
simply despised them or led them into dreadful scrapes."

"Well, Ann, we will talk it over another time."

Rivers smiled and Ann Penhallow went out, longing to attend to the
swollen face now bent low over a book. The two men she left smoked in
such silence as is one of the privileges of friendship. At last Penhallow
said, "Of course, Mark, my wife is right, but I shall miss the girl. My
wife cannot ride with me, and now I am to lose Leila. After school come
young men. Confound it, rector, I wish the girl had less promise of
beauty--of--well, all the Greys have it--attractiveness for our sex. Some
of them are fools, but they have it all the same, and they keep it to the
end. What is most queer about it is that they are not easily won. The men
who trouble hearts for a game do not win these women."

"Some one will suffer," said Rivers reflectively. He wondered if the
wooing of Ann Grey by this masterful man had been a long one. A moment he
gave to remembrance of his own long and tender care of the very young
wife he had won easily and seen fade with terrible slowness as her life
let fall its joys as it were leaf by leaf, with bitter sense of losing
the fair heritage of youth. Now he said, "Were all these women, Squire,
who had the gift of bewitchment, good?"

"No, now and then hurtful, or honest gentlewomen, or like Ann Grey too
entirely good for this wicked world--"

"As Westways knows," said Rivers, thinking how the serene beauty of a
life of noble ways had contributed spiritual charm to whatever Ann
Pen