htfoot, with a cynicism which confounded
the Major. "He will lose his head over her doll baby of a sister, I
suppose--not that she isn't a good girl," she added briskly. "Julia Ambler
couldn't have had a bad child if she had tried, though I confess I am
surprised that she could have helped having a silly one; but Betty, why,
there hasn't been a girl since I grew up with so much sense in her head as
Betty Ambler has in her little finger."

"When I think of you fifty years ago, I must admit that you put a high
standard, Molly," interposed the Major, who was always polite when he was
not angry.

"She spent a week with me while you were away," Mrs. Lightfoot went on in
an unchanged voice, though with a softened face, "and, I declare, she kept
house as well as I could have done it myself, and Cupid says she washed the
pink teaset every morning with her own hands, and she actually cured
Rhody's lameness with a liniment she made out of Jimson weed. I tell you
now, Mr. Lightfoot, that, if I get sick, Betty Ambler is the only girl I'm
going to have inside the house."

"Very well, my dear," said the Major, meekly, "I'll try to remember; and,
in that case, I reckon we'd as well drop a hint to Dan, eh, Molly?"

Mrs. Lightfoot looked at him a moment in silence. Then she said "Humph!"
beneath her breath, and took up her knitting from the little table at her
side.

But Dan was living fast at college, and the Major's hints were thrown away.
He read of "the Ambler girls who are growing into real beauties," and he
skipped the part that said, "Your grandmother has taken a great fancy to
Betty and enjoys having her about."

"Here's something for you, Champe," he remarked with a laugh, as he tossed
the letter upon the table. "Gather your beauties while you may, for I
prefer bull pups. Did Batt Horsford tell you I'd offered him twenty-five
dollars for that one of his?"

Champe picked up the letter and unfolded it slowly. He was a tall, slender
young fellow, with curling pale brown hair and fine straight features. His
face, in the strong light of the window by which he stood, showed a tracery
of blue veins across the high forehead.

"Oh, shut up about bull pups," he said irritably. "You are as bad as a
breeder, and yet you couldn't tell that thoroughbred of John Morson's from
a cross with a terrier."

"You bet I couldn't," cried Dan, firing up; but Champe was reading the
letter, and a faint flush had risen to his face. "The girl is