you, but you
must poise yourself on your chair like a schoolboy. Is it a necessary
part of your existence that you must behave like a boy rather than a
girl?"

Patty hung her head shamefacedly, and the smile left her lips.

"And then, what is this that I hear about a rifle? Is it true that
Captain Palmer has lent you one?"

"Only just to practise with for a few weeks. Dad, don't be angry. He has
a new one, so he doesn't miss it. Why"--warming to her subject and
forgetting for the moment that she was in great danger of still further
disgracing herself in her father's eyes by her confession--"I can hit
even a small object at a very considerable distance five times out of
six."

The perplexed look deepened in her father's eyes, but the irritability
had cleared away. He toyed with the open letter that he held in his
hand. "I suppose it is for this as well as for your other schoolboy
pranks that your aunt has invited only Rose. But I don't like it--it is
not right. If it were not for the unfairness to Rose, I should have
refused outright. As it is, the invitation has been accepted by me, and
it must stand, for Rose must not be deprived of her pleasures because
you like----"

"Invitation! What invitation?" interrupted Patty.

"Your aunt is giving a big ball on the 13th, and she is insistent that
Rose should be present. It will be the child's first ball, and I cannot
gainsay her. But, Patty, I should like you both to go. You are
seventeen, are you not?"

"Seventeen and a half," returned Patty with a little choke in her voice.

It was the first she had heard of the invitation, and it stung her to
think that Lady Glendower thought her too much of a hoyden to invite her
with the sister who was but one year older. Patty was girl enough to
love dancing even above her other amusements, and the unbidden tears
came into her eyes as she stood looking forlornly at her father.

Colonel Bingham coughed, and tapped his writing-desk with the letter.

"Seventeen and a half," he repeated, "quite old enough to go to a ball.
Never mind, Patty, I've a good mind to give a ball myself and leave out
her younger daughter, only that it would be too much like _tu quoque_,
and your aunt has a reason for not extending her invitation here which I
should not have in relation to your cousin Fanny, eh, Patty?"

But Patty's eyes were still humid, and she could only gaze dumbly at her
father with such a pathetic look on her pretty face that Colo