would, or should grow a year
older. He notified Jeff and his friend Mr. Lawrence at the table that
he regarded himself as a candidate for Miss Endicott's hand, and had
"staked" the ground, and he informed her that as soon as he could bring
himself to break an oath which he had made twenty years before, never
to address another woman, he intended to propose to her. Rose, who had
lingered at the table a moment behind the other ladies, assured the
old fellow that he need fear no rival, and that if he could not muster
courage to propose before she left, as it was leap-year, she would
exercise her prerogative and propose herself. The Major, with his hand
on his heart as he held the door open for her, vowed as Rose swept past
him her fine eyes dancing, and her face dimpling with fun, that he was
ready that moment to throw himself at her feet if it were not for the
difficulty of getting up from his knees.

A little later in the afternoon Margaret was down among the rose-bushes,
where Lawrence had joined her, after Rose had executed that inexplicable
feminine manoeuvre of denying herself to oppose a lover's request.

Jeff was leaning against a pillar, pretending to talk to Rose, but
listening more to the snatches of song in Margaret's rich voice, or to
the laughter which floated up to them from the garden below.

Suddenly he said abruptly, "I believe that fellow Lawrence is in love
with Margaret."

Rose insisted on knowing what ground he had for so peculiar an opinion,
on which he incontinently charged his friend with being one of "those
fellows who falls in love with every pretty girl on whom he lays his
eyes," and declared that he had done nothing but hang around Margaret
ever since he had come to the county.

What Rose might have replied to this unexpected attack on one whom she
reserved for her own especial torture cannot be recorded, for the
Major suddenly appeared around the verandah. Both the young people
instinctively straightened up.

"Ah! you rascals! I catch you!" he cried, his face glowing with jollity.
"Jeff, you'd better look out,--honey catches a heap of flies, and sticks
mighty hard. Rose, don't show him any mercy,--kick him, trample on him."

"I am not honey," said Rose, with a captivating look out of her bright
eyes.

"Yes, you are. If you are not you are the very rose from which it is
distilled."

"Oh, how charming!" cried the young lady. "How I wish some woman could
hear that said to me!"

"Don