rod as his best retort.

At the home of Agnes Elliston Bobby's car stopped almost as a matter
of habit, and though the hour was a most informal one he walked up the
steps as confidently as if he intended opening the door with a
latch-key; for since Agnes was become his trustee, Bobby had awakened,
overnight, to the fact that he had a proprietary interest in her which
could not be denied.

Agnes came down to meet him in a most ravishing morning robe of pale
green, a confection so stunning in conjunction with her gold-brown
eyes and waving brown hair and round white throat that Bobby was
forced to audible comment upon it.

"Cracking!" said he. "I suppose that if I hadn't had nerve enough to
pop in here unexpectedly before noon I wouldn't have seen that gown
for ages."

It was Aunt Constance, the irrepressible, who, leaning over the stair
railing, sank the iron deep into his soul.

"It was bought at Trimmer and Company's, Grand Street side, Bobby,"
she informed him, and with this Parthian shot she went back through
the up-stairs hall, laughing.

"Ouch!" said Bobby. "That was snowballing a cripple," and he was
really most woebegone about it.

"Never mind, Bobby, you have still plenty of chance to win," comforted
Agnes, who, though laughing, had sympathetic inkling of that sore spot
which had been touched. He seemed so forlorn, in spite of his big,
good-natured self, that she moved closer to him and unconsciously put
her hand upon his arm. It was too much for him in view of the way she
looked, and, suddenly emboldened, he did a thing the mere thought of
which, under premeditation, would have scared him into a frapped
perspiration. He placed his hands upon her shoulders, and, drawing her
toward him, bent swiftly down to kiss her. For a fleeting instant she
drew back, and then Bobby had the surprise of his life, for her warm
lips met his quite willingly, and with a frank pressure almost equal
to his own. She sprang back from him at once with sparkling eyes, but
he had no mind to follow up his advantage, for he was dazed. It had
left him breathless, amazed, incredulous. He stood for a full minute,
his face gone white with the overwhelming wonder of this thing that
had happened to him, and then the blunt directness which was part of
his inheritance from his father returned to him.

"Well, anyhow, we're to be engaged at last," he said.

"No," she rebuked him, with a sudden flash of mischief; "that was
perfectly wicked