any salt on
Willy Forrest's tail--eh, what?"

She admitted the truth with the first smile he had seen since she
entered the cottage. His quick bustling manner, the deference he always
paid to her, despite his odd phrases, won upon her good humor and led
her to open her heart to him.

"My father is going mad," she said quietly--his startled "eh, what" not
preventing her; "we are making our house a home for the destitute, and
the first arrived just three weeks ago. Imagine a flaxen-haired image of
righteousness, who draws my portrait on the covers of books and puts
feathers in my hat. He is in love with me, Willy, and he is to be my big
brother. Yesterday I took him to Ranalegh and heard a discourse upon the
beauties of nature and the wonders of the air and the sky. Oh, my dear
man--what a purgatory and what an event. We are going to sell our jewels
presently and to live in Whitechapel. My father, I must tell you, seems
afraid of this beautiful apparition and implores him every day not to go
away. I know that he stops because he is inclined to make love to me.

"Whew--so it's only 'inclined' at present?"

"Absolutely as you say. There appear to be two of us. I have been
expecting a passionate declaration--but the recollections of a feathered
beauty who once lived in a fairy palace, in a wonderland where you dine
upon red herrings--she is my hated rival. I am more beautiful,
observe--that is conceded, but he cannot understand me. The feathered
hat has become my salvation. My great big brother can't get over
it--and oh, the simplicity of the child, the youthful verdant
confidence, my Willy. Don't you see that the young man thinks I am an
angel and is wondering all the time where the wings have gone to."

"Ha, ha--he'd better ask Paquin. Are you serious, Anna?"

"As serious as the Lord High Executioner himself. My father has adopted
a youth--and I have a big brother. He has consented to dwell in our
house and to spend our savings because he believes that by so doing he
is in some way helping me. I don't in the least want his help, but my
father is determined that I shall have it. I am not to bestow my young
affections upon him--nor, upon the other hand, am I to offend him. Admit
that the situation is delightful. Pity a poor maiden in her distress."

Willy Forrest did not like the sound of it at all.

"The old chap must have gone dotty," he remarked presently; "they're
often taken this way when they get to a certain