dear!" she said.

"She's a fat old poke!" Pauline returned. "Mayn't I give you a lift?
I can go 'round by the manor road 's well as not."

Shirley accepted readily, settling herself in the gig, and balancing
her pail of milk on her knee carefully.

"Good-by," Pauline called. "Mind, you're to be ever and ever so much
better, next time I come, Hilary."

"Your sister has been sick?" Shirley asked, her voice full of
sympathetic interest.

"Not sick--exactly; just run down and listless."

Shirley leaned a little forward, drawing in long breaths of the clear
evening air. "I don't see how anyone can ever get run down--here, in
this air; I'm hardly indoors at all. Father and I have our meals out
on the porch. You ought to have seen Betsy Todd's face, the first time
I proposed it. 'Ain't the dining-room to your liking, miss?'" she
asked.

"Betsy Todd's a queer old thing," Pauline commented. "Father has the
worst time, getting her to come to church."

"We were there last Sunday," Shirley said. "I'm afraid we were rather
late; it's a pretty old church, isn't it? I suppose you live in that
square white house next to it?"

"Yes," Pauline answered. "Father came to Winton just after he was
married, so we girls have never lived anywhere else nor been anywhere
else--that counted. Any really big city, I mean. We're dreadfully
tired of Winton--Hilary, especially."

"It's a mighty pretty place."

"I suppose so." Pauline slapped old Fanny impatiently. "Will you go
on!"

Fanny was making forward most reluctantly; the Boyd barn had been very
much to her liking. Now, as the three dogs made a swift rush at her
leaping and barking around her, she gave a snort of disgust, quickening
her pace involuntarily.

"Don't call them off, please!" Pauline begged Shirley. "She isn't in
the least scared, and it's perfectly refreshing to find that she can
move."

"All the same, discipline must be maintained," Shirley insisted; and at
her command the dogs fell behind.

"Have you been here long?" Pauline asked.

"About two weeks. We were going further up the lake--just on a
sketching trip,--and we saw this house from the deck of the boat; it
looked so delightful, and so deserted and lonely, that we came back
from the next landing to see about it. We took it at once and sent for
a lot of traps from the studio at home, they aren't here yet."

Pauline looked her interest. It seemed a very odd, attractive way of
doing thin