ible."

"I am; I was discovered recently kissing my saddle-mare."

"That settles it! Sagamore, give the young lady the grip."

Sylvia Landis glanced at the dog, then impulsively shifting the whip
to her left hand, held out the right. And very gravely the Sagamore pup
laid one paw in her dainty white gloved palm.

"You darling!" murmured the girl, resuming her whip.

"I notice," observed Siward, "that you are perfectly qualified for
membership in our association for the promotion of bad manners. In fact
I should suggest you for the presidency--"

"I suppose you think all sorts of things because I gushed over that
dog."

"Of course I do."

"Well you need not," she rejoined, delicate nose up-tilted. "I never
kissed a baby in all my life--and never mean to. Which is probably more
than you can say."

"Yes, its more than I can say.

"That admission elects you president," she concluded. But after
a moment's silent driving she turned partly toward him with mock
seriousness: "Is it not horridly unnatural in me to feel that way about
babies? And about people, too; I simply cannot endure demonstrations.
As for dogs and horses--well, I've admitted how I behave; and, being so
shamelessly affectionate by disposition, why can't I be nice to babies?
I've a hazy but dreadful notion that there's something wrong about me,
Mr. Siward."

He scrutinised the pretty features, anxiously; "I can't see it," he
said.

"But I mean it--almost seriously. I don't want to be so aloof, but--I
don't like to touch other people. It is rather horrid of me I suppose to
be like those silky, plumy, luxurious Angora cats who never are civil to
you and who always jump out of your arms at the first opportunity."

He laughed--and there was malice in his eyes, but he did not know her
well enough to pursue the subject through so easy an opening.

It had occurred to her, too, that her simile might invite elaboration,
and she sensed the laugh in his silence, and liked him for remaining
silent where he might easily have been wittily otherwise.

This set her so much at ease, left her so confident, that they were on
terms of gayest understanding presently, she gossiping about the guests
at Shotover House, outlining the diversions planned for the two weeks
before them.

"But we shall see little of one another; you will be shooting most
of the time," she said--with the very faintest hint of challenge--too
delicate, too impersonal to savour of coquetry.