wards Marielihou. "What do you call it?"

"Marrlyou," growled Johnnie; and Marielihou bristled and spat at the
advancing white hand, which retired rapidly.

"The nasty beast!" said Miss Penny, and Marielihou glared at her with
eyes of scorching green fire.

"Marielihou is not good company for anyone but herself," said Graeme.
"Now, where would you like to go?"

"We were up that way before breakfast," said Miss Penny, nodding due
north.

"Been to the Coupee yet?"

"No, we've been nowhere except just along here. We were afraid of
getting lost or tumbling over the edges."

"Then you must see the Coupee at once. And we'll call at John Philip's
as we pass, to get you some shoes."

"Shoes?" and each stuck out a dainty brown boot and examined it
critically for inadequacies, and then looked up at him enquiringly.

"Yes, I know. They're delicious, but in Sark you must wear Sark
shoes--this kind of thing"--sticking up his own--"or you may come to a
sudden end. And, seeing that you're in my charge--"

"Oh?" said Margaret.

"Come along to John Philip's," said Miss Penny. And as they turned
down the road with Punch, the hedge opened and Scamp came wriggling
through, with white-eyed glances for Johnnie Vautrin and Marielihou
sitting in the bushes farther up.

VIII

Miss Penny and Graeme did most of the talking. Margaret was unusually
silent, pondering, perhaps, her friend's utterances of the early
morning, and still wondering at the strange turn of events that had so
unexpectedly thrown herself and John Graeme into such close
companionship that he could actually claim to be in charge of her, and
had proved it beyond question by making her buy a pair of shoes which
she considered anything but shapely.

Graeme understood and kept to his looking-glass promise.

His heart was dancing within him. It was impossible to keep the lilt
of it entirely out of his eyes. They were radiant with this
unlooked-for happiness.

It was Margaret's shadow that mingled with his own on the sunny
road--when it wasn't Miss Penny's. It was Margaret's pleated blue
skirt that swung beside him to a tune that set his pulses leaping.
Miss Penny's skirt was there too, indeed, but a thousand of it
flapping in a gale would not have quickened his pulse by half a beat.

And Miss Penny probably understood--some things, or parts of
things--or thought she did, and was extremely happy in that which was
vouchsafed to her. Oh, she knew, did Miss Penny