e babbling brook
at their feet, and the great branches of the oak trees over their heads,
and listen to him while he read such sweet poems to her--poems of how
some lover loved a lassie, and how bright was their future.

But still there was a change in him; he wasn't just like he used to be
when she was only Dorothy Glenn, working for her living in the
book-bindery. And just to show him that she did not notice the change,
and did not care, she was so gay and hoidenish, so full of repartee and
laughter, that she saw him open his eyes in wonder more than once; and
Doctor Bryan gave her the _soubriquet_ of "Madcap Dorothy," which seemed
to suit her exactly.

There was no prank that could ever have entered a roguish girl's brain
which she did not play upon Kendal.

This phase of her character rather annoyed Kendal than pleased him; and
it seemed to him that she took a special delight in teasing him. She hid
his slippers, slipped briars into his couch, turned tack-points upward
in his lounging chairs, and substituted periodicals a month old for his
morning journals and magazines, until he almost grew to detest her for
becoming the torment of his life. Shrewd as he was in the ways of young
girls, he did not know that this is the course which many a young girl
pursues toward a young man with whom she has fallen in love, and would
not have him know it for the whole world.

If there was anything which Kendal detested, it was a girl who was
always on the lookout to turn every word and action into a joke. He
preferred them modest and flower-like; still, he was in duty bound to
treat her as well as he could because she was under that roof.

And there was another reason why he began to abhor Dorothy. Before her
appearance on the scene, there had been a wild hope in his heart that
some day he might possibly inherit a good portion of Doctor Bryan's
money. For two years or more he had left no stone unturned to get into
the old gentleman's good graces.

True, Dorothy was as much of a stranger to Doctor Bryan as he himself
was, but who knew but that, by some freak of unlucky fate, he might take
a notion to leave the girl all of his fortune? He wished to Heaven she
had never crossed the threshold of Gray Gables.

At this turn of affairs it occurred to him that it would not be a bad
idea to test the old gentleman's friendship for himself; and the
greatest of all tests, he believed, was to borrow money from him. If
Doctor Bryan refu