she persisted. "I'd
be at least 'paddling my own canoe' and making a place for myself where
I'd be really needed. Oh, yes, I know what you're going to say," she
added hurriedly, as he tried to interrupt her. "Just what mamma said,
that you do need me here to keep things stirred up and lively. That
might be all right if we were going to live along this way always. If
you'd settle down to be a nice comfortable old bachelor, I could try to
be an ideal old-fashioned spinster sister. But you'll be getting married
some day, and then I won't be needed at all, and it'll be too late for
me to strike out then and be a modern, up-to-date bachelor maid like
Miss Henrietta Robbins. I know that Captain Doane says that old maid
aunts are the salt of the earth," she added, a twinkle in her eyes
taking the place of the tear which she hastily dashed away with the back
of her hand, "but I don't want to be one in somebody else's home. If I
have to be one at all I want to be the Miss Henrietta kind. But," she
admitted honestly, "I'd rather marry some day, after I'd done all the
other things I've planned to, and no Prince Charming will ever find his
way to Lone-Rock. You know that perfectly well."

Jack threw back his head to laugh at the dolorous tone of her
confession, and then grew suddenly sober, staring into the fire, as if
her remarks had started a very serious train of thoughts. The
snow-muffled silence was so deep that again the ticking of the distant
clock sounded through closed doors.

"Sometimes," he began presently, "when I see the way you chafe at the
loneliness here, and hate the monotony and long so desperately to get
away, I wonder if any girl would be happy here. If I would have a right
even to ask one to share such a life with me."

Mary gave him a keen, penetrating glance, her pulses throbbing at this
beginning of a confidence. She hesitated to say anything, for fear her
reply might stop him, but when he seemed waiting for her answer she said
with a worldly-wise air, "That depends on the girl. If it were Kitty
Walton or Gay or Roberta, they'd be simply bored to death up here.
They're so used to constant entertainment. But if it were somebody like
Betty, it would be different. Lone-Rock isn't any lonesomer than the
Cuckoo's Nest was, and she loved that place. And this would be a good
quiet spot where she could go on with her writing, so she wouldn't have
to give up her ambition."

Then, feeling that perhaps she was expa