I'd done it to spite her. Once, too, when
I tried to reason with her--and Mary Virginia needed reason if ever a
kid did--she bumped my head until I had knots on it. There's your
delightful Mary Virginia for you!"

"Anyhow, you didn't die and become an angel--you stayed disagreeably
alive and you're going to become a lawyer," said Mary Virginia, too
gently. "And your head was bumpable, Laurence, though I'm sorry to say
I don't ever expect to bump it again. Why, I'm going away to school
and when I come back I'll be Miss Eustis, and you'll be Mr. Mayne!
Won't it be funny, though?"

"I don't see anything funny in calling you Miss Eustis," said
Laurence, with boyish impatience. "And I'm certainly not going to
notice you if you're silly enough to call me Mister Mayne. I hope you
won't be a fool, Mary Virginia. So many girls are fools." He ate
another cake.

"Not half as big fools as boys are, though," said she,
dispassionately. "My father says the man is always the bigger fool of
the two."

Laurence snorted. "I wonder what we'll be like, though--both of us?"
he mused.

"You? You're biggity now, but you'll be lots worse, then," said Mary
Virginia, with unflattering frankness. "I think you'll probably strut
like a turkey, and you'll be baldheaded, and wear double-lensed horn
spectacles, and spats, and your wife will call you 'Mr. Mayne' to your
face and 'Your Poppa' to the children, and she'll perfectly _despise_
people like Madame and the Padre and me!"

"You never did have any reasoning power, Mary Virginia," said
Laurence, with brotherly tact. "Our black cat Panch would put it all
over you. Allow me to inform you I'm _not_ biggity, miss! I'm
logical--something a girl can't understand. And I'd like to know what
you think _you're_ going to grow up to be?"

"Oh, let's quit talking about it," she said petulantly. "I hate to
think of growing up. Grown ups don't seem to be happy--and _I_ want to
be happy!" She turned her head, and met once more the absorbed and
watchful stare of the man in the wheel-chair.

"Weren't you sorry when you had to stop being a little boy and grow
up?" she asked him, wistfully.

"Me?" he laughed harshly. "I couldn't say, miss. I guess I was born
grown up." His face darkened.

"That wasn't a bit fair," said she, with instant sympathy.

"There's a lot not fair," he told her, "when you're born and brought
up like I was. The worst is not so much what happens to you, though
that's pretty bad;