he park, father," was the pleading rejoinder.
"I'm quite beginning to feel at home on Tricksie now."

Laurence gave way, and Tricksie darted off, perhaps a trifle too
vivaciously for a learner of the noble art of horsemanship. But the girl
kept her seat bravely, and the conceded scamper being brought to a
close, she came round to where Laurence awaited, and slid from her
saddle.

"Father, I won't have you call it 'lessons' any more," she cried. "I can
ride now; _can_ ride--do you hear!"

"Oh, can you?" laughed Laurence, thinking what a pretty picture she made
standing there with the full light of the setting sun tinting the golden
waves of her hair, playing upon the great dark eyes. Indeed, he owned
inwardly to a weakness, a soft place as strange as it was unwonted, for
this child of his. Yet she was something more than a child now, quite a
tall slip of a girl at the angular age; but there was nothing awkward or
angular even then about Fay Stanninghame.

"Well, hitch up the pony to the rail there," he went on. "Those two
scamps can take him in when they are tired of careering around and
whooping like Sioux on the war-path."

The two boys, also happy in the possession of a pony apiece, had lost no
time either in learning to ride it.

"There's no part of a fool about either of those chaps," said Laurence,
more to himself than to the girl, as he watched the two circling at full
gallop in and out among the trees, absolutely devoid of fear. "Let's
stroll a little, Fay; or would you rather go in?"

"Of course, I wouldn't," linking her arm in his. "Father, are we very
rich now?"

"Oh, pretty warm. Think it fun, eh, child?"

"Fun? Why it's heavenly. This lovely place! Oh, sometimes I dream that
this _is_ all a dream, and then--to wake up and find it real!"

"Well, dear, be as happy as you like now--all day and every day. You
have had enough of the other thing to last you a precious long time."

They strolled on through the sweet May evening--on beneath a great beech
hanger, where cushats cooed softly among the green mast, and the air was
musical with the sweet piping of thrushes and the caw of homing rooks.
Here and there a gap in the hawthorn hedge disclosed a glimpse of
red-tiled roof and farm stack--and nestling among the trees of the park
the chimneys of the Hall.

Laurence Stanninghame had found this place by a mere chance. He might
have purchased it for a third of its value, but he preferred not.
Possibly h