"I ought to," she laughed. "Father's been ending the summer here ever
since I was a little girl. You might take us around Bald Hill," she
suggested to the chauffeur. "It is a very pretty drive," she
explained, turning to Sam as the machine wheeled, and at the same time
waving her hand gaily to the disconsolate Hollis, who was "hard hit"
with a different girl every season. "It's just about a two-hour trip.
What a fine morning to be out!" and she settled back comfortably as the
machine gathered speed. "I do love a machine, but father is rather
backward about them. He will consent to ride in them under necessity,
but he won't buy one. Every time he sees a handsome pair of horses,
however, he has to have them."

"I admire a good horse myself," returned Sam.

"Do you ride?" she asked him.

"Oh, I have suffered a few times on horseback," he confessed; "but you
ought to see my kid brother ride. He looks as if he were part of the
horse. He's a handsome brat."

"Except for calling him names, which is a purely masculine way of
showing affection, you speak of him almost as if you were his mother,"
she observed.

"Well, I am, almost," replied Sam, studying the matter gravely. "I
have been his mother, and his father, and his brother, too, for a great
many years; and I will say that he's a credit to his family."

"Meaning just you?" she ventured.

"Yes, we're all we have; just yet, at least." This quite soberly.

"He must talk of getting married," she guessed, with a quick intuition
that when this happened it would be a blow to Sam.

"Oh, no," he immediately corrected her. "He isn't quite old enough to
think of it seriously as yet. I expect to be married long before he
is."

Miss Stevens felt a rigid aloofness creeping over her, and, having a
very wholesome sense of humor, smiled as she recognized the feeling in
herself.

"I should think you'd spend your vacation where the girl is," she
observed. "Men usually do, don't they?"

He laughed gaily.

"I surely would if I knew the girl," he asserted.

"That's a refreshing suggestion," she said, echoing his laugh, though
from a different impulse. "I presume, then, that you entertain
thoughts of matrimony merely because you think you are quite old
enough."

"No, it isn't just that," he returned, still thoughtfully. "Somehow or
other I feel that way about it; that's all. I have never had time to
think of it before, but this past year I have had a sort of s