xpect to
marry you at eighteen. You promised."

"Sure thing," admitted Boots; "I've bought the house, you know."

"I know it," said the child gravely.

Boots looked down at her; she smiled and laid her head, with its
clustering curls, against his shoulder, watching the game below with the
quiet composure of possession.

Their relations, hers and Lansing's, afforded infinite amusement to the
Gerards. It had been a desperate case from the very first; and the child
took it so seriously, and considered her claim on Boots so absolute,
that neither that young man nor anybody else dared make a jest of the
affair within her hearing.

From a dimple-kneed, despotic, strenuous youngster, ruling the nursery
with a small hand of iron, in half a year Drina had grown into a rather
slim, long-legged, coolly active child; and though her hair had not been
put up, her skirts had been lowered, and shoes and stockings substituted
for half-hose and sandals.

Weighted with this new dignity she had put away dolls, officially.
Unofficially she still dressed, caressed, forgave, or spanked Rosalinda
and Beatrice--but she excluded the younger children from the nursery
when she did it.

However, the inborn necessity for mimicry and romance remained; and she
satisfied it by writing stories--marvellous ones--which she read to
Boots. Otherwise she was the same active, sociable, wholesome,
intelligent child, charmingly casual and inconsistent; and the list of
her youthful admirers at dancing-school and parties required the
alphabetical classification of Mr. Lansing.

But Boots was her own particular possession; he was her chattel, her
thing; and he and other people knew that it was no light affair to
meddle with the personal property of Drina Gerard.

Her curly head resting against his arm, she was now planning his future
movements for the day:

"You may do what you please while I'm having French," she said
graciously; "after that we will go fishing in Brier Water; then I'll
come home to practice, while you sit on the veranda and listen; then
I'll take you on at tennis, and by that time the horses will be brought
around and we'll ride to the Falcon. You won't forget any of this, will
you? Come on; Eileen and Gerald have finished and there's Dawson to
announce luncheon!" And to Gerald, as she climbed down to the ground:
"Oh, what a muff! to let Eileen beat you six--five, six--three! . . .
Where's my hat? . . . Oh, the dogs have got it and a