ts because I
haven't any hoops. I'm just wild to wear hoops, aren't you, Virginia?"

"I reckon so," responded Virginia, doubtfully; "but it will be hard to sit
down, don't you think?"

"Oh, but I know how," said Betty. "Aunt Lydia showed me how to do it
gracefully. You give a little kick--ever so little and nobody sees it--and
then you just sink into your seat. I can do it well."

"You were always clever," exclaimed Virginia, as sweetly as before. She was
parting her satiny hair over her forehead, and the glass gave back a
youthful likeness of Mrs. Ambler. She was the beauty of the family, and she
knew it, which made her all the lovelier to Betty.

"I declare, your freckles are all gone," she said, as her sister's head
looked over her shoulder. "I wonder if it is the buttermilk that has made
you so white?"

"It must be that," admitted Betty, who had used it faithfully for the sixty
nights. "Aunt Lydia says it works wonders." Then, as she looked at herself,
her eyes narrowed and she laughed aloud. "Why, Dan won't know me," she
cried merrily.

But whatever hopes she had of Dan withered in the summer. When he came home
for the holidays, he brought with him an unmistakable swagger and a supply
of coloured neckerchiefs. On his first visit to Uplands he called Virginia
"my pretty child," and said "Good day, little lady," to Betty. He carried
himself like an Indian, as the Governor put it, and he was very lithe and
muscular, though he did not measure up to Champe by half a head. It was the
Montjoy blood in him, people thought, for the Lightfoots were all of great
height, and he had, too, a shock of his father's coarse black hair, which
flared stiffly above the brilliant Lightfoot eyes. As he galloped along the
turnpike on Prince Rupert, the travelling countrymen turned to look after
him, and muttered that "dare-devil Jack Montjoy had risen from his
grave--if he had a grave."

Once he met Betty at the gate, and catching her up before him, dashed with
her as far as Aunt Ailsey's cabin and back again. "You are as light as a
fly," he said with a laugh, "and not much bigger. There, take your hair out
of my eyes, or I'll ride amuck."

Betty caught her hair in one hand and drew it across her breast. "This is
like--" she began gayly, and checked herself. She was thinking of "that
devil Jack Montjoy and Jane Lightfoot."

"I must take my chance now," said Dan, in his easy, masterful way. "You
will be too old for this by next y