t! It is not fair for you two
girls to run off together like this. Harriet has disappeared, and Mrs.
Wilson is hiding somewhere. Do you remember, Ruth, you promised to go
with me to see the old Washington deer park. It has just been restocked
with deer. Won't you come, too, Bab?"

Barbara shook her head as Hugh and Ruth walked off together. Bab felt
sure that Hugh would like to have a chance to talk with Ruth alone,
for they had never ceased to be intimate friends since the early days
at Newport.

Peter Dillon stood looking out at the river, whistling softly, "Kathleen
Mavourneen." It was the song Barbara had first heard him whistle in the
drawing-room of Mr. Hamlin's house. The young man said nothing, for a few
moments, even when he and Bab were alone. But when Bab came over toward
him, Peter smiled. He had his hat off and he had run his hands through
his dark auburn hair.

"I say, Miss Thurston, why can't you make up your mind to like me?" he
questioned. "Surely you don't suspect me of dark designs, do you? You
American people are so strange. Just because I am half a Russian you
think I have some sinister purpose in my mind. I am not an anarchist,
and I don't want to go about trampling on the poor. I wish you could
meet the Russian ambassador. He is about the most splendid-looking man
you ever saw. I know him, well, you see, because my mother was a distant
cousin of his."

Barbara laughed good-humoredly. "You seem to be a kind of connecting link
between three or four nations--Russia, America, China. What are your real
duties at your legation?"

Barbara looked at her companion with a real question in her brown eyes--a
question she truly desired to have answered. She was interested to know
what duties an attache performed for his embassy. Peter, in spite of his
frivolities, claimed to be a hard worker.

"You have not seen the loveliest part of Mt. Vernon yet, Miss Thurston,"
Peter Dillon interposed just at this instant. "I want to show you the old
garden, and we must hurry before the gates are closed. Yes; I know I did
not answer your question. An attache just makes himself generally useful
to his chief. But if you really want to know what my ambition is, and how
I work to achieve it, why some day I will tell you." Peter looked at Bab
so seriously that she answered quickly:

"Yes, I should dearly love to see the garden."

Bab and Peter Dillon wandered together through the paths formed by the
box hedges planted