prised as if you hadn't expected me at all."

"Surprised to see you just about expresses it, Eleanor. I am surprised
to see you. I was looking for a little girl in hair ribbons with her
skirts to her knees."

"And a blue tam-o'-shanter?"

"And a blue tam-o'-shanter. I had forgotten you had grown up any to
speak of."

"You see me every vacation," Eleanor grumbled, as she stepped into the
waiting motor. "It isn't because you lack opportunity that you don't
notice what I look like. It's just because you're naturally
unobserving."

"Peter and Jimmie have been making a good deal of fuss about your
being a young lady, now I think of it. Peter especially has been
rather a nuisance about it, breaking into my most precious moments of
triviality with the sweetly solemn thought that our little girl has
grown to be a woman now."

"Oh, does _he_ think I'm grown up, does he really?"

"Jimmie is almost as bad. He's all the time wanting me to get you to
New York over the weekend, so that he can see if you are any taller
than you were the last time he saw you."

"Are they coming to see me this evening?"

"Jimmie is going to look in. Peter is tied up with his sister. You
know she's on here from China with her daughter. Peter wants you to
meet the child."

"She must be as grown up as I am," Eleanor said. "I used to have her
room, you know, when I stayed with Uncle Peter. Does Uncle Peter like
her?"

"Not as much as he likes you, Miss Green-eyes. He says she looks like
a heathen Chinee but otherwise is passable. I didn't know that you
added jealousy to the list of your estimable vices."

"I'm not jealous," Eleanor protested; "or if I am it's only because
she's blood relation,--and I'm not, you know."

"It's a good deal more prosaic to be a blood relation, if anybody
should ask you," David smiled. "A blood relation is a good deal like
the famous primrose on the river's brim."

"'A primrose by the river's brim a yellow primrose was to him,--and
nothing more,'" Eleanor quoted gaily. "Why, what more--" she broke off
suddenly and colored slightly.

"What more would anybody want to be than a yellow primrose by the
river's brim?" David finished for her. "I don't know, I'm sure. I'm a
mere man and such questions are too abstruse for me, as I told your
Aunt Margaret the other day. Now I think of it, though, you don't look
unlike a yellow primrose yourself to-day, daughter."

"That's because I've got a yellow ribbon on my hat."