ttish Chiefs, don't you know? Merton
had to play Lord Soulis, 'cause he drew the short straw; but he got
cross, and wouldn't play good a bit."

"Wouldn't play _well_, or _nicely_," corrected Margaret. "But after
that, Susan dear?"

"That took a long time," said the child. It seemed, when she was alone
with Margaret, that she could not talk enough; the little pent-up nature
was finding most delightful relief and pleasure in unfolding before the
sympathy that was always warm, always ready.

"You see, when it came to carrying me off (I was Helen Mar, after I'd
been Marion and was dead), Merton was just horrid. He said he wouldn't
carry me off; he said he wouldn't have me for a gift, and called me
Scratchface, and all kinds of names. And of course Lord Soulis wouldn't
have talked that way; so Wallace (of course Basil _had_ to be Wallace
when he drew the long straw, and he never cheats, though Merton does,
whenever he gets a chance)--well, and so, Wallace told him, if he
didn't carry me off in two shakes of a cat's tail--"

"Susan D.!"

"Well, that's what he _said_, Cousin Margaret. I'm telling you just as
it happened, truly I am. If he didn't carry me off in two shakes of a
cat's tail, he'd pitch him over the parapet,--you know there's a
splendid parapet in the summer-house,--and so he wouldn't, and so he
did; but Mert held on, and they both went over into the meadow. I guess
Lord Soulis got the worst of it down there, for when they climbed up
again he did carry me off, though he pinched me hard all the way, and
made my arm all black and blue; I didn't say anything, because I was
Helen Mar, but I gave it to him good--I mean well--this morning, and
served him out. And then Wallace had to rescue me, of course, and that
was _great_, and we all fell over the parapet again, and that was the
way I tore the gathers out of my frock. So you see, Cousin Margaret!"

Susan D. paused for breath, and bent over her sewing with exemplary
diligence. Margaret took the child's chin in her hand, and raised her
face towards her.

"Susan," she said, gently, "after you had that fine play--it must have
been a great play, and I wish I had seen it--after that, what did you
do?"

"We--we--went to bed!" said Susan D.

"Why did you go without coming to say good night? Answer me truly, dear
child."

The two pairs of gray eyes looked straight into each other. A shadow of
fear--a suggestion of the old look of distrust and suspicion--crept int