air ones rest in
the open meadows; and we should sing with the robins, and make friends with
the little foxes."

He laughed softly. "Ah, Betty, Betty, I know you now for a dreamer of
dreams. With all your pudding-mixing and your potato-planting you are
moon-mad like the rest of us."

She made a disdainful little gesture. "Why, I never planted a potato in my
life."

"Don't scoff, dear lady," he returned warningly; "too great literalness is
the sin of womankind, you know."

"But I don't care in the least for vegetable-growing," she persisted
seriously.

The humour twinkled in his eyes. "Thriftless woman, would you prefer to
beg?"

"When the Major rode by," laughed Betty; "but when I heard you coming, I'd
lie hidden among the briers, and I'd scatter signs for other gypsies that
read, 'Beware the Montjoy.'"

His face darkened and he frowned. "So it's the Montjoy you're afraid of,"
he rejoined gloomily. "I'm not all Lightfoot, though I'm apt to forget it;
the Montjoy blood is there, all the same, and it isn't good blood."

"Your blood is good," said Betty, warmly.

He laughed again and met her eyes with a look of whimsical tenderness.
"Make me your beggar, Betty," he prayed, smiling.

"You a beggar!" She shook a scornful head. "I can shut my eyes and see your
fortune, sir, and it doesn't lie upon the roadside. I see a well-fed
country gentleman who rises late to breakfast and storms when the birds are
overdone, who drinks his two cups of coffee and eats syrup upon his
cakes--"

"O pleasant prophetess!" he threw in.

"I look and see him riding over the rich fields in the early morning,
watching from horseback the planting and the growing and the ripening of
the corn. He has a dozen servants to fetch the whip he drops, and a dozen
others to hold his bridle when he pleases to dismount; the dogs leap round
him in the drive, and he brushes away the one that licks his face. I see
him grow stout and red-faced as he reads a dull Latin volume beside his
bottle of old port--there's your fortune, sir, the silver, if you please."
She finished in a whining voice, and rose to drop a courtesy.

"On my word, you're a witch, Betty," he exclaimed, laughing, "a regular
witch on a broomstick."

"Does the likeness flatter you? Shall I touch it up a bit? Just a dash more
of red in the face?"

"Well, I reckon it's true as prophecy ever was," he said easily. "It isn't
likely that I'll ever be a beggar, despite your kindly wishes