you can get a chance."

"After what you have told me," said Lodloe, "I think I shall say it."

"Good for you!" cried Lanigan. "And if I go to Calthy and ask her to
lend me the money to get a frame made for Mrs. Petter's fire-screen,
don't you be surprised. What I'm doing is just as much for her good as
for mine. In this whole world there couldn't be a better match for her
than old Tippengray, and she knows it, and wants him."

"If there was a society for the prevention of cruelty to Greek scholars,
I don't know but that it might interfere in this case," said Lodloe.

XVIII.

SWEET PEAS.

Walter Lodloe was now as much flushed with the fever of love-making as
Lanigan Beam had been flushed with the fever of money-making, but he did
not have the other man's luck. Mrs. Cristie gave him few opportunities
of making her know him as he wished her to know him. He had sense enough
to see that this was intentional, and that if he made any efforts to
improve his opportunities he might drive her away.

As he sat at his tower window, his fingers in his hair and his mind
trying to formulate the prudent but bold thing he ought to do, a voice
came up from below. It was that of Ida Mayberry.

"Mr. Lodloe! Mr. Lodloe!" she cried; and when he had put his head out of
the window she called to him:

"Don't you want to come down and help us teach Mr. Tippengray to play
tennis? He has taught us so much that we are going to teach him
something."

"Who are going to teach?" asked Lodloe.

"Mrs. Cristie and I," said Ida. "Will you come?"

Instantly consenting, Lodloe drew in his head, his love fever rising.

The Greek scholar was one of the worst tennis-players in the world. He
knew nothing of the game, and did not appear capable of learning it. And
yet when Lanigan Beam appeared, having just arrived on horseback from
Romney, Mrs. Cristie would not allow the Greek scholar to give up his
place to the younger man. She insisted on his finishing the game, and
when it was over she declared the morning too warm to play any more.

As she and Lodloe stood together for a moment, their rackets still in
their hands, Mrs. Cristie smiled, but at the same time frowned.

"It is too provoking," she said; "I wish Douglas would wake up and
scream his very loudest. I was just on the point of asking Ida to go
with me into the garden to pick sweet peas, when Mr. Beam hands her that
horrible bunch of wild flowers, crammed full of botany, I've no