Kurt--not right away, at least."

Half way to the ranch they stopped at Mrs. Merlin's cottage.

"She certainly looks the part of propriety to perfection," thought Pen, as
she surveyed the tall, angular, spectacled woman, who came to the car, and
whose grim features relaxed slightly after a keen glance at the young
girl.

"I'll have four children this time instead of three," she said.

"What would she think," reflected Pen, "if Kind Kurt should tell her what
kind of a child the fourth one is!"

Back at Top Hill, Pen packed the luggage to be expressed to Mrs. Kingdon,
and Jo made another trip to town, planning to go from there to
Westcott's.

At dinner time Kurt arrived, and Pen chuckled as she easily read his
dismay at the situation.

"He's foreseeing and dreading all sorts of terrible things I may do or am
capable of doing. Just because he is looking for trouble, I have no desire
to give it. I'll play a new role and show him what a tame, good little
girl I can be; maybe I'll like being one and it'll turn out to be a real
reform. It would be awfully odd if he found his pedalled ideal in The
Thief!"

She was conscious of his searching eyes upon her. She looked demurely
down. In a soft, subdued voice she read little stories to the children,
and when their bedtime hour came, she went upstairs with them.

Later she joined him on the library veranda where he was smoking his pipe,
for it was one of the few nights when it was warm enough for such
indulgence.

She went up to him unfalteringly.

"I have put myself on honor while Mrs. Kingdon is away," she said gravely.
"I will try hard to do as you want me to do, but it will be easier for me
if you will trust me."

Her eyes looked out so very straight, with none of the worldly wisdom he
had seen in them the day she had been transferred to his guardianship,
that he found himself incapable of harboring any further doubt of her
sincerity.

"I will," he said staunchly; "I will trust you as she does."

They sat together in the moonlight without further converse and in the
reposeful silence a mutual understanding was born.

Presently she went inside and played some old-time airs on the piano with
the caressing, lingering touch of those who play by ear.

"Where did you learn to play?" he asked wonderingly.

She looked up, slightly startled. She hadn't heard him come in and her
thoughts had been far away from Top Hill.

"I never did learn," she said, rising from th