houghts now and
then while they last. I brought you here to-day to say all this knowing
we should be alone, and without----"

"Tommy?" says she, with a little laugh.

"Oh, well! You must confess I got rid of him," says he, smiling too, and
glad in his heart to find her so cheerful. "I think if you look into it,
that my stratagem, the inciting him to the overcoming of his sister in
that race, was the work of a diplomatist of the first water. I quite
felt that----"

A war whoop behind him dissolves his self-gratulations into nothing.
Here comes Tommy the valiant, triumphant, puffed beyond all description
with pride and want of breath.

"I beat her, I beat her," shrieks he, with the last note left in his
tuneful pipe. He staggers the last yard or two and falls into Joyce's
arms, that are opened wide to receive him. Who shall say he is not a
happy interlude? Evidently Joyce regards him as such.

"I came back to tell you," says Tommy, recovering himself a little. "I
knew," with the fearless confidence of childhood, "that you'd be longing
to know if I beat her, and I did. She's down there how with Bridgie,"
pointing to the valley beneath, "and she's mad with me because I didn't
let her win."

"You ought to go back to her," says Dysart, "she'll be madder if you
don't."

"She won't. She's picking daisies now."

"But Bridget will want you."

"No," shaking his lovely little head. "Bridgie said: 'ye may go, sir,
an' ye needn't be in a hurry back, me an' Mickey Daily have a lot to say
about me mother's daughter.'"

It would be impossible to describe the accuracy with which Tommy
describes Bridget's tone and manner.

"Oh! I daresay," says Mr. Dysart. "Me mother's daughter must be a truly
enthralling person."

"I think Tommy ought to be educated for the stage," says Joyce in a
little whisper.

"He'll certainly make his mark wherever he goes," says Dysart, laughing.
"Tommy," after a careful examination of Monkton, Junior's, seraphic
countenance, "don't you think you ought to take your sister on to the
Court?"

"So I will," says Tommy, "in a minute or two." He has climbed into
Joyce's lap, and is now sitting on her with his arms round her neck. To
make love to a young woman and to induce her to marry you with a
barnacle of this sort hanging round her suggests difficulties. Mr.
Dysart waits. "All things come to those who wait," says a wily old
proverb. But Dysart proves this proverb a swindle.

"Now, Tommy," says h