uncle takes every
paper in New York and Brooklyn, and he wants to have the editor of
the _Herald_ arrested, and he is very anxious to hang the entire
staff of the _Daily News_. It's all well enough to stand there
laughing, but I believe there'll be a war, and then my troubles
will begin!"

Ailsa, down on her knees again, dabbled thoughtfully in the soil,
exploring the masses of matted spider-wort for new shoots.

Camilla looked on, resignedly, her fingers playing with the
loosened masses of her glossy black hair. Each was following in
silence the idle drift of thought which led Camilla back to her
birthday party.

"Twenty!" she said still more resignedly--"four years younger than
you are, Ailsa Paige! Oh dear--and here I am, absolutely
unmarried. That is not a very maidenly thought, I suppose, is it
Ailsa?"

"You always were a romantic child," observed Ailsa, digging
vigorously in the track of a vanishing May beetle. But when she
disinterred him her heart failed her and she let him scramble away.

"There! He'll probably chew up everything," she said. "What a
sentimental goose I am!"

"The first trace of real sentiment I ever saw you display," began
Camilla reflectively, "was the night of my party."

Ailsa dug with energy. "_That_ is absurd! And not even funny."

"You _were_ sentimental!"

"I--well there is no use in answering you," concluded Ailsa.

"No, there isn't. I've seen women look at men, and men look back
again--the way _he_ did!"

"Dear, please don't say such things!"

"I'm going to say 'em," insisted Camilla with malicious
satisfaction. "You've jeered at me because I'm tender-hearted
about men. Now my chance has come!"

Ailsa began patiently: "There were scarcely a dozen words
spoken----"

Camilla, delighted, shook her dark curls.

"You've said that before," she laughed. "Oh, you pretty minx!--you
and your dozen words!"

Ailsa Paige arose in wrath and stretched out a warning arm among
her leafless roses; but Camilla placed both hands on the fence top
and leaned swiftly down from the veranda steps,

"Forgive me, dear," she said penitently. "I was only trying to
torment you. Kiss me and make up. I know you too well to believe
that you could care for a man of that kind."

Ailsa's face was very serious, but she lifted herself on tiptoe and
they exchanged an amicable salute across the fence.

After a moment she said: "What did you mean by 'a man of _that_
kind'?"

Cami