lla's shrug was expressive. "There are stories about him."

Ailsa looked thoughtfully into space. "Well you won't say such
things to me again, about any man--will you, dear?"

"You never minded them before. You used to laugh."

"But this time," said Ailsa Paige, "it is not the least bit funny.
We scarcely exchanged----"

She checked herself, flushing with annoyance. Camilla, leaning on
the garden fence, had suddenly buried her face in both arms. In
feminine plumpness, when young, there is usually something left of
the schoolgirl giggler.

The pretty girl below remained disdainfully indifferent. She dug,
she clipped, she explored, inhaling, with little thrills, the faint
mounting odour of forest loam and sappy stems.

"I really must go back to New York and start my own garden," she
said, not noticing Camilla's mischief. "London Terrace will be
green in another week."

"How long do you stay with the Craigs, Ailsa?"

"Until the workmen finish painting my house and installing the new
plumbing. Colonel Arran is good enough to look after it."

Camilla, her light head always ringing with gossip, watched Ailsa
curiously.

"It's odd," she observed, "that Colonel Arran and the Craigs never
exchange civilities."

"Mrs. Craig doesn't like him," said Ailsa simply.

"You do, don't you?"

"Naturally. He was my guardian."

"My uncle likes him. To me he has a hard face."

"He has a sad face," said Ailsa Paige.

CHAPTER III

Ailsa and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Craig, had been unusually
reticent over their embroidery that early afternoon, seated
together in the front room, which was now flooded with sunshine--an
attractive, intimate room, restful and pretty in spite of the
unlovely Victorian walnut furniture.

Through a sunny passageway they could look into Ailsa's
bedroom--formerly the children's nursery--where her maid sat sewing.

Outside the open windows, seen between breezy curtains, new buds
already clothed the great twisted ropes of pendant wistaria with a
silvery-green down.

The street was quiet under its leafless double row of trees, maple,
ailanthus, and catalpa; the old man who trudged his rounds
regularly every week was passing now with his muffled shout:

Any old hats
Old coats
Old boots!
_Any_ old mats
Old suits,
Old flutes! Ca-ash!

And, leaning near to the sill, Ailsa saw him shuffling along,
green-baize bag bulging, a pyramid of stove-pipe hats crammed down
ove