a face behind his back to annoy her sister.
She now came forward and said, with a charming innocence in her eyes:--

"I don't think you can have it cooked for luncheon, Gerty, for that
would look too much like bringing your tea in your pocket, and getting
hot water for twopence. Wouldn't it?"

Macleod turned and regarded this new-comer with an unmistakable "Who is
this?"--"_Co an so?_"--in his air.

"Oh, that is my sister Carry, Sir Keith," said Miss White. "I forgot you
had not seen her."

"How do you do?" said he, in a kindly way; and for a second he put his
hand on the light curls as her father might have done. "I suppose you
like having holidays?"

From that moment she became his deadly enemy. To be patted on the head,
as if she were a child, an infant--and that in the presence of the
sister whom she had just been lecturing.

"Yes, thank you," said she, with a splendid dignity, as she proudly
walked off. She went into the small lobby leading to the door. She
called to the little maid-servant. She looked at a certain long bag made
of matting which lay there, some bits of grass sticking out of one end.
"Jane, take this thing down to the cellar at once! The whole house
smells of it."

Meanwhile Miss White had carried her salad dressing in to Marie, and
had gone out again to the veranda where Macleod was seated. He was
charmed with the dreamy stillness and silence of the place, with the
hanging foliage all around, and the colors in the steep gardens, and the
still waters below.

"I don't see how it is," said he, "but you seem to have much more open
houses here than we have. Our houses in the North look cold, and hard,
and bare. We should laugh if we saw a place like this up with us; it
seems to me a sort of a toy place out of a picture--from Switzerland or
some such country. Here you are in the open air, with your own little
world around you, and nobody to see you; you might live all your life
here, and know nothing about the storm crossing the Atlantic, and the
wars in Europe, if only you gave up the newspapers."

"Yes, it is very pretty and quiet," said she, and the small fingers
pulled to pieces one of the rose leaves that Carry had thrown at her.
"But you know one is never satisfied anywhere. If I were to tell you the
longing I have to see the very places you describe as being so
desolate--But perhaps papa will take me there some day."

"I hope so," said he; "but I would not call them desolate. They are