ew up in his face and
then went out. After fifteen minutes of miserable effort he at last
heard the water boil noisily in the kettle where he had placed water
and tea together. He poured out a cupful of the poisonous brew and
stood regarding it in despair.

"I wish Mrs. Brown would come home," he groaned. "I'd be glad of any
woman, any girl, even Cousin Eleanor."

He had opened a window, for the place was hot and close and through
this he could hear, of a sudden, the sound of an automobile coming up
the drive. He dashed through the dark passage, hurried to the great
front door, and flung it open. There was a crunching of big wheels on
the gravel and the snorting of an engine checked suddenly to a stop.
It was not Mrs. Brown and Janet, for, though he heard voices, they
were not theirs. The car had stopped beyond the fallen tree and some
one was coming across the grass--two people, for the voices were a
man's and a girl's. Apparently Cousin Tom had not stopped to finish
his dinner, after all, and he had brought Cousin Eleanor.

"Yes, I'll be glad to see even her," he thought desperately.

The two came nearer, a man in white flannels, but bareheaded in the
hurry of his coming, and a girl in white also. There was something
familiar in the swing of those broad shoulders, in the tone of that
voice. Yet Oliver stood, blinking stupidly, holding to the side of the
door, too dazed to speak when the two stepped out of the dark and came
up the steps--the Beeman and Polly.

CHAPTER XI

THREE COUSINS

"Good gracious, Oliver, do you mean to say you really did not know? We
used to talk it over, Polly and I, and wonder whether you were not
beginning to see through us. Janet had some suspicions, and when she
met us at the fair this afternoon, she understood who we were at last.
Now I will present you to Miss Eleanor Marshall Brighton, known to her
own family as Polly. I would not have broken this thing to you so
suddenly, if I had taken time to think."

Oliver listened to Cousin Tom's half-apologetic explanations, yet he
scarcely heard them, but still stood leaning against the doorpost,
gaping with astonishment. Of course he had always known that there was
something unusual about the Beeman, but as to who he really was he had
never had an inkling. And this was Cousin Eleanor, the girl he had
pictured so definitely that it seemed she could not be other than the
prim, detested person he had so dreaded meeting. It was the