her fumbled in his pocket for a cigar.

Louise slipped from the arm of his chair and stood opposite him, her
lips pouted teasingly, the young face glowing with mischief and fun. "Am
I?" she asked, curtsying and twinkling. "'Cause if you're going to ride
down to the valley to see the boy just because Beautiful asked you,
Beautiful will go alone. But if you come because _I_ want you,"--and
Louise smiled bewitchingly,--"why, Beautiful will come too, and sing for
you--perhaps."

"My heart, my service, and my future are at your feet, Senorita Louisa,
my mouse. Are your eyes gray or green this morning?"

"Both," replied Louise quickly. "Green for spunk and gray for love.
That's what Aunty Eleanor says."

"Come a little nearer. Let me see. No, they are quite gray now."

"'Cause why?" she cooed, and stooping, kissed him with warm, careless
affection. "You always ask me about my eyes when you want me to kiss
you. Of course, when you want to kiss _me_, why, you just come and take
'em."

"My esteemed privilege, sweetheart. I am your caballero."

"Did Aunty Eleanor?" said Louise.

But Walter Stone rose and straightened his shoulders. "That will do,
mouse. I can't have any jealousy between my sweethearts."

"Never! And, Uncle Walter, do you want to ride Major or Rally? Rally and
Boyar get along better together. I'll saddle Boy in a jiffy."

* * * * *

To ride some ten miles in the blazing sun of midsummer requires a kind
of anticipatory fortitude, at fifty, especially when one's own vine and
fig tree is cool and fragrant, embowered in blue flowers and graced by,
let us say, Louise. And a cigar is always at its best when half-smoked.
But when Louise came blithely leading the two saddle-ponies, Black Boyar
and the big pinto Rally, Walter Stone shook an odd twenty years from
his broad shoulders and swung into the saddle briskly.

From the shade of the great sycamore warders of the wide gate, he waved
a gauntleted salute to Aunt Eleanor, who stood on the porch, drawing a
leaf of the graceful moon-vine through her slender fingers. She nodded a
smiling farewell.

Louise and her uncle rode as two lovers, their ponies close together.
The girl swayed to Boyar's quick, swinging walk. Walter Stone sat the
strong, tireless Rally with solid ease.

The girl, laughing happily at her triumph, leaned toward her escort
teasingly, singing fragments of old Spanish love-songs, or talking with
eager lips an